


A Monster's Regimen

by ShadowstarKanada



Category: ReBoot (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Chess, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Invasion of Privacy, Psychological Torture, The Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowstarKanada/pseuds/ShadowstarKanada
Summary: The monsters beckon, and a fate worse than deletion has begun.
Relationships: Bob/Dot Matrix (ReBoot)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 10





	1. A Maze At Work

_"Ah. A fate worse than deletion. And they call_ me _a monster."_

Matrix hit the wall hard enough to dent it. "This is the third dead end, Bob! How is he doing this?" he asked, his voice strained.

Bob kept himself from rolling his eyes. Bob had always thought _he_ was bad, but the renegade took impatience to another level. "He has control over the system defenses. Closing off pathways is pretty normal," said Bob, putting a hand on the renegade's arm. Trying to keep himself determined and focused on the task at hand was a lot more difficult with Matrix trying to brute force them to a solution. Letting this anger out physically wasn't going to help the system. "You need to calm down, Matrix."

"Calm down?" He shook Bob's hand off and punch the wall again. "AndrAIa could be in that room with him. _Dot_ could be in that room with him. Can't you emulate some concern about that?"

"What is _that_ supposed to me?" Matrix looked away and shook his head. "Say what you mean, Matrix."

"You and Dot were always a constant in my childhood." Bob twitched. "And maybe it's because I was a kid. Maybe I didn't see things the way they really were, but I always thought... You two stopped talking during the war, and you didn't start again. And then she rejected you. Look. I don't _blame_ you, Bob, but you're a Guardian. Even if you're not in love, you don't get to stop caring."

"Stop caring?" Bob shook his head at the larger sprite, in disbelief that quickly turned to anger. "Of _course_ I care about Dot! I _love_ her!" Bob's hand hit the wall beside him and he pulled it back immediately, rubbing it awkwardly as he took a few steadying breaths. They were _both_ upset, the people up in the command room were important to _both_ of them, but this aimless running around wasn't getting them anywhere. "I _am_ in love with her, but hitting walls isn't going to get us any closer to her or AndrAIa," he said, biting the words out. He took another deep breath. "Dot and Phong might be the only sprites that can get us through this... _maze_. We need to figure out another way."

"Another way..." Matrix shook his head and his shoulders fell. "You'd think we'd be able to get through a basic _maze_ on our own. Games use mazes all the time." He looked at Bob out of the corner of his eye, then smashed the wall again.

"The maze paths change too often," muttered Bob, shaking his head at the pointless damage. "Glitch, try another scan." The keytool was quiet for a nano, then beeped. Matrix leaned over to look at the readouts along with Bob.

It was a strange reading, not exactly something either the Guardian or the Renegade had seen before. It was similar to a sprite, but different enough that neither would have been entirely confident about the claim. Power levels were all over the place, spiking and subsiding without any obvious pattern. "What's that mean? I don't understand," said Matrix.

"Neither do I," said Bob, "but this is the first reading Glitch has managed since Megabyte took over. We need to follow it. Keep Gun ready: I can't tell what's ahead of us. These aren't normal readings." He began following Glitch's direction as Matrix took out his weapon, his mechanical eye rolling around in his head for a better targeting lock in case it was needed. "It might even be a tear with strong cohesion," the blue sprite said doubtfully.

"Do you really think so?" Bob's face looked skeptical and he shrugged in response. Matrix continued to scan the corridor. "Do you think maybe it's _him_? Glitch detected that he wasn't you..."

"I don't think so," said Bob. "We haven't had a chance to talk properly, but I didn't get the impression it recognized Megabyte so much as the code he'd stolen." He held up a hand, stopping the pair in their tracks. There was a noise up ahead. "Do you hear that?"

Matrix closed his eyes. "Sounds like... crying?"

"Sounds like..." Bob's listened carefully, his eyebrows knitting together for a moment before he recognized the voice. "Dot!" Bob ran forward, a burst of speed carrying him away from Matrix before the larger sprite could try to recommend caution. He ran around two corners, finding her sitting on the floor, huddled into as small a position as she could. She looked up as he came around the final corner, her eyes wide and terrified, her cheeks streaked with tears. She pressed herself further into the wall, and Bob paused long enough that Matrix caught up behind him. "It's me, Dot."

Matrix put a hand on Bob's arm. "She's alone. We don't know it's _her_ ," he said.

"It's her," said Bob, pushing the renegade's hand off of his arm and kneeling in front of the traumatized sprite. He put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched away. There was real fear in her eyes, and it could only come from one source. "You think I'm him? It's okay, Dot. I'll prove it," he said, then brought his keytool up between them. "Glitch, daisywheel."

The keytool clicked and beeped for a moment, then, rather more slowly than usual, created a three dimensional printed flower. Bob smiled and offered it to Dot. She looked at it for a moment, then took a few deep, gasping breaths. Her eyes relaxed slightly, the terror disappearing from them only to be replaced with a sort of exhaustion and pain that concerned the Guardian. "Bob? Matrix? It's really you?"

"Yes," said Bob. "Are you all right?" She shook her head and uncurled herself a little. Her right wrist was cradled in her left hand, and Bob hissed as he saw the state of it. Her fingers were all at awkward angles, one of Dot's nails had been pushed back to make a boxy angle with the rest of her finger. "Maybe we can get to the infirmary," he said quietly.

Matrix leaned over Bob, looking at his sister's hand. "I can set that," he said. Bob looked up at him with a question in his eyes. Matrix shrugged. "Turns out, games really are dangerous for little sprites." Dot's face paled. "So, _sis._ How'd you get out?" he asked, almost casually as he pushed Bob aside to examine Dot's hand more thoroughly.

"Hack and Slash," she said. "He was hiding as Frisket, and when he transformed, the two of them just grabbed me and pulled me out of the room. Probably some of the programming Phong did when he put them back together..."

Bob nodded. "Did anyone else make it out, Dot?"

"I don't know, Bob. Mouse stopped Megabyte from grabbing me. AndrAIa was near one of the upper doors... Dad and Enzo were on the lower concourse with Megabyte. Phong was..." She shook her head. "I don't remember where everyone was. I'm not sure... I barely had time to think before we were out of the room." She looked over at Matrix. "I'm sorry. I don't know if AndrAIa made it out," she said to the renegade, who simply nodded.

"This is going to hurt," he warned. She swallowed and nodded. He tugged a few times, and she whimpered in the back of her throat. Matrix gave her a half-grin. "Not so bad, right?" Dot huffed a bit of a surprised laugh at that, her eyes meeting her brother's for a moment. He undid one of the leather cords from his wrists and pulled something straight and sturdy out of his boot. "If you got out with Hack and Slash, where'd they get to?"

Dot took a deep breath. "They— he—" She shook her head. "It seemed like almost no time at all. Maybe a few nanos after that ridiculous _announcement_ he made. It was like Megabyte knew exactly where we were, but maybe it was all just coincidence. I was trying to come up with some sort of plan, a way to get back in the control room, and suddenly I was being dragged down more hallways between them." She paused, her gaze turning inwards for a moment. "They never were good at taking directions. I told them— but they ended up taking us down a dead end." She went quiet while Matrix bound her wrist.

Bob nodded. "So they held him off while you got away."

Dot shook her head slowly. She was looking Bob's direction, but her eyes seemed to be looking very far away. "It was a _dead end_ , Bob. There was no way out. He took them apart. Piece by piece, tossing them around. They were terrified. And he just... he _enjoyed_ it. The look in his eyes..." She shivered. "And he looked at me the same way, and I thought... this is it. This is where he deletes me." She shook her head and looked at her hand, bound as well as it could be by Matrix's impromptu medical skills.

"But he didn't," said Bob.

"No." She swallowed. "He grabbed my hand, did _that_. He told me he wanted me to surrender."

"Surrender?" Bob looked up sharply at her, concern in his eyes. "That's not what he said to the system."

"He said he wanted _revenge_ ," reminded Dot. "I don't think any of us really know what that means. He's the one who hurt _us_ , after all; what's there to get revenge for? Not inviting him to Enzo's birthday party?"

"I suppose," said Bob uncertainly. "None of it really makes sense. It sounds like he's focused on you, Dot. Did you do something he might particularly remember?" Dot looked down, touched her patched hand with a frown, and shrugged. Bob sighed. "Matrix, with all that system hopping you did, you've probably seen more viruses than me. Have you seen anything like that?"

"No," said Matrix with a shake of his head. "They'd focus on me, occasionally, if they identified my code as Guardian. And they'd sometimes mono-focus on other viruses." He cocked his head and Dot shivered.

"When Megabyte and Hex fought," she said quietly, "all of Mainframe was in danger. Not that it was in any less when they worked together."

"Yeah, in other systems, too. It always seemed to end with system damage. Sometimes irreparable. I can't see any reason he'd focus his attention on Dot. But Bob..." Matrix shook his head and turned his focus toward the other Guardian. "I _can_ see a reason he'd pretend to _be_ her. He knows we both love her." Bob watched carefully as she flinched and turned away from him. "If he's focused on one of us, or _both_ of us, Dot would be a good choice. There's no one in a better position to hurt you, and only AndrAIa's in a better position to hurt me."

Bob frowned and shook his head. His gut was telling him that this woman was Dot, but he didn't have any way to prove it. Even if Glitch's scans weren't wildly unhelpful right now, he didn't think the keytool would be sufficient proof when his combined form hadn't been able to figure out what his doppelgänger had been up to. But there had to be something. His eyes fell on the daisywheel he'd offered Dot as proof that he was who he said. Maybe that was the solution. "Tell me something only the two of us know," he said.

Dot frowned. "People were always watching us, Bob."

"I know, but... well, there's got to be _something_ that Megabyte doesn't know."

"Maybe... that game, when we met AndrAIa. Enzo was off somewhere playing the game. And we rebooted and you..." She glanced at Matrix and turned a very dark green.

Bob blushed as well, but smiled triumphantly. "You see? She's—"

"That's in the archives," said Matrix.

"It is?" The pair spoke simultaneously and looked at Matrix.

"All the games are in the archives," he said. "After you made me a Guardian back then, I... I felt a little lost, I guess, so AndrAIa and I watched the archives over and over. I was trying to be the best Guardian I could be. And that's in the archives."

Dot shook her head. "Well, if _that's_ in there, I can't think of anything." She looked at Bob for a moment, then shook her head. "No wonder he was able to fool me. There's nothing between us, is there, Bob."

This was the second time a Matrix sibling had said they weren't in love, and this was a bit worse. The Guardian pulled back, hurt. How could she say that? He'd done everything for her, he'd risked his very existence for her, separated from Glitch for her! "Who's fault is that? You've barely even _talked_ to me since the restart."

Dot's lips pursed. "Well, maybe I would have if _you_ trusted me to know what was going on with you." Bob turned his head, confused for a moment. "Oh, did you think Phong could really keep the whole _Glitch-Bob might fragment himself into a googol of tiny pieces_ from me forever?"

" _Glitch_ - _Bob_ , huh?" Bob's eyes narrowed as Dot looked down a little guiltily for barely a femtosecond. "I guess that meant it was okay that you didn't tell me we were fighting _Guardians_?"

The guilt didn't last long. She looked up with a challenge. "And what would you have done if I had?" she asked with a laugh. "Gone off to save them on your own?"

"Maybe I would have!"

"You know, Bob, you have a martyr complex—"

"Enough!" Matrix pushed himself between them. "You _must_ be Dot, I can't imagine Megabyte acting like _either_ of you. Which means we have bigger problems."

Dot and Bob stared angrily around Matrix for a nano more, then Dot dropped her eyes. "You're right, Matrix. I'm sorry. I'm angry at myself, Bob, not you."

A flash of triumph lit Bob's eyes for a moment before the weight of guilt came down on him. He hadn't stopped Megabyte from almost marrying her, _Glitch_ had. And then, he'd convinced her to be in the command room where Megabyte had terrorized her again, and he hadn't been there for her when the virus had broken her hand. And now, he was letting what Megabyte had done get between them, when he _knew_ that Dot was second guessing herself.

So much for having learned a lot out in the web.

"I'm sorry, too." He stood, then reached out a hand, pulling her to her feet. "Dot, we're going to be okay.We'll get him for real. You know the maze layout, right?"

She shook her head. "It's _adaptive_. There's no real layout. I know some ways around it, though. Cheats..." She frowned skeptically and looked between Bob and Matrix. "You two aren't thinking about storming the war room, are you?" The two Guardians looked at each other and shrugged. "That's not going to work," she said with a shake of her head. "It's the most protected place in the system, other than the core... ironically, we could access the core more easily." Dot frowned. "Actually, that's not a bad idea. There's an admin console there. Bob, can Glitch get a lock on Mouse?"

"Glitch is having some trouble with scans," Matrix said.

"What?" Dot frowned, then winced. "Oh. That'll be Mouse's keytool containment protocol. I guess it worked."

"Her _what_ now?"

"We were fighting Guardians," explained Dot. "An army of Guardians with functional keytools would have been disastrous. Mouse had a method she thought would jam them. We weren't sure it would work, and we didn't know what it would do to Bob, so it was always intended as a last resort. And then we found out from Turbo that they didn't actually _have_ keytools anymore, so it didn't matter, but we never uninstalled the software..." She looked down. "Actually, we weren't sure what it would do to keytools generally. You probably shouldn't use Glitch until we disable it."

Bob looked at Glitch and let out a breath. It was probably better to know, but it was frustrating to think he'd been kept in the dark about this system modification throughout the entire war effort. But he was a professional, he was going to deal with the problem head on instead of wishing things were different. "Okay. How do we disable it?"

"Without access to the war room? Or Mouse? I'm not sure."

"Well, that's just great," said Matrix.

"Look," said Dot. "You can't expect an ideal plan with Megabyte in the war room. We'll get to a command line, and we'll figure it out. Bob's not half bad at a terminal, right, Bob?" The Guardian gave her a strained smile and Dot sighed. "A command line... What we need to do now is get outside, and to do that, all we have to do is let the maze win."

Bob looked at her in surprise for a moment, then laughed. Matrix wasn't as amused. "I don't get it. If we're outside," said the renegade, "how are we going to get to a command line?"

"The pinnacle," replied Bob and Dot in unison. He grinned confidently at her, and she returned it with her own shy smile. "You remember the system upgrade, when Megabyte tried to delete everyone?" said Bob. " _We_ were inside, having descended with the pinnacle into the main core control room. Come to think of it, he was playing the trojan horse then, too..."

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get this over with."

Dot nodded, and Bob took her uninjured hand in his own while Matrix led the three past doorways and various offices, read only rooms, and evacuation spaces. He kept Gun at the ready, seeing as it was the only ranged weapon that they had while Glitch was out of commission. The trio turned down different hallways, often seeing strange white binomes at the far ends, though it seemed none of them were yet interested in following the sprites.

A few _did_ end up in their way as they arrived at the doors; Bob dropped Dot's hand while he and Matrix dispatched them easily enough, throwing two CPU officers against the wall. Matrix grabbed a third, ready to throw him aside, but Bob stopped him. "Hold him steady," Bob instructed. "I'm going to have Glitch try to scan him. It didn't seem to be doing damage before, and... Maybe that keytool dampening field of Mouse's will let me get some information."

The binome struggled a bit in the big green arms, but a small one binome versus a sprite like Matrix was always going to be an unfair fight. Glitch beeped and spun, working diligently to get answers for Bob. Turning, spinning, it's power was depleting more quickly than a scan, but Glitch came through and displayed after a moment. "Some sort of... _drone_ ," Bob said. "This is _not_ good. I think Megabyte's connected directly to them. He might even be able to hear us through them."

Dot walked closer, a frown on her face, and she leaned in to look at the binome. "This is Mister Appleby," she said, confusion and surprise vying for dominance in her voice. "He shouldn't have been in the Principle Office when Megabyte took control." She looked into the eyes under the greying head of hair, then put a hand on the binome's forehead, as though she could detect a temperature change in the creature to determine an illness. "He's really _cold_ ," she said, then shook her head. "Mister Appleby? Can you... oh..." She swayed, and Bob grabbed her, pulling her away even as Matrix pulled the infected binome away from her in the opposite direction.

"You okay, Dot?" asked her brother. The woman in question nodded slowly and the renegade scowled, hit the zero binome's head precisely to knock it out, then tossed it to the side. Bob took her hand and looked at it, shaking his head at Matrix so that the other sprite headed back over. For a nano, her fingers looked very white, but she slowly regained color as the pair of guardians watched. "If this is infectious without him here, we are in for a _lot_ of trouble," Matrix said.

"This is bad," agreed Bob. "This is _very_ bad."

Dot, for her part, looked a bit confused as she pulled herself away from Bob and his steadying hold. "I'm fine, though. Just... that was really... weird."

"If Glitch's readings were right, Megabyte might have had some connection to you for a nano or two," said Bob.

Her lips pursed and she frowned contemplatively. "I thought I saw the war room for a moment. It felt... _annoying_." She looked at the two Guardians. "I _am_ okay, right?"

"Don't worry about it," Bob replied with a nod. "Just don't touch any more of them." He looked over at the door. "Let's get to that command line. Matrix, you ready?"

The renegade nodded, readied his weapon, and kicked the door open. Dot gasped, and Bob's eyes widened in alarm. Outside, past the golden exterior and marble staircases, the view of the city was complete chaos. There were tears floating above buildings as far as the eye could see, slowly descending upon the city. Monotone, blank-faced binomes were walking out at the edges of the Principle Office, slowly making their way across the bridges between the circular disk of the city and the great sphere in the middle of it all.

Matrix, further in front of Dot and Bob, had noticed something more pertinent. "AndrAIa! Mouse!" He called to the other members of the command team, heading out of sight before the pair behind him could react. By the time they could see the rest of the sprites, Matrix had already reached them.

Bob and Dot, meanwhile, were both assessing the situation. Six bridges around the Principle Office: most of the binomes appeared to have arrived by one single bridge, the one that connected G-Prime, where the two, now three, sprites had set up their position. Dot could only see two others from their current position, but there were binomes slowly massing on the Mainframe sides. Mouse was fighting the binomes off with the flat of her blade, while AndrAIa used her paralyzing nails to devastating effect. Matrix was using Gun in a low-power mode, obviously trying not to hurt the binomes who had already crossed the links.

Action was called for. "We can't fight Megabyte on two fronts— take down the bridges!" Dot called out the order, her voice loud and clear even over the booming sound of Gun.

Bob had already come to the same conclusion, and surveyed what he could. Dot functioned best when she called strategy, but _he_ was the master of tactics. The other three were too busy fighting to take action, and Dot needed to stay away from the binomes... "Dot, get the quick-release on the link from Baudway," he said. "I'll handle G-Prime."

She nodded and turned, heading toward the bridge at a jog, while Bob moved to the rest of the team. He dodged and weaved around the binomes that had already made it past the checkpoint that Mouse and AndrAIa had tried to set up; there was no point in fighting these drone-like binomes at the moment, the other three could work containment.

"Get them off the bridge!"

"Easier said than done," Matrix replied, but began focusing his fire on areas between the binomes from the middle to the leading edge of the bridge between Mainframe and its command center, large concussive blasts sending most of the desaturated ones and zeros backwards toward the city.

Bob looked to the side, noting the build-up of binomes on the edge of Beverly Hills. "Matrix and I will handle this one. AndrAIa, Mouse, I need you to get the other bridges offline, ASAP."

The two women looked at each other, and AndrAIa nodded seriously. "We're on it, Bob," she said as the pair headed off.

The only problem with this on-the-fly idea was that the binomes were coming directly at him now. They couldn't harm him with their touch, the Guardian code protected him from that, and they weren't particularly aggressive, but the numbers were enough that they could mob him without trying very hard. Bob pushed two of them aside as he struggled to reach the pillar where the bridge release was tucked away.

He had to fight the urge to ask for Glitch's help. It was strange: of course, he'd felt the keytool's loss when he'd been sent to the web, but hadn't felt as reliant as he did now. Maybe it was from their time as a merged entity... regardless, he was going to have to do this alone.

"Ow!" A binome had attached itself to his leg and was now _biting_ him! Bob pulled open a panel, and moved his arms forcefully in a wide circle to give himself a bit more breathing room. There it was, the quick release. Shatter the glass, pull the cord, bridge tumbles down to isolate the command area... easy enough, except that one of the binomes had attached itself to the metal glass puncturing device.

"Bob! The bridge is clear, can't say for how long!" The guardian glanced over to see the renegade awkwardly firing at the leading edge of the bridge, kicking backward every so often to keep the infected binomes from making too much of a mess around him.

"Glitch, hammer— wait, no, nevermind. I'll manage this myself." He clenched his fist and punched the glass out, wincing as a few shards embedded themselves in his knuckles, then pulled the cord. A great thumping noise occurred, but when Bob turned his head, he saw that the bridge was _not_ down. The center had unbuckled, but had caught on something—

And the renegade was being mobbed. Bob elbowed one of the binomes in the face, heading towards the bulkier sprite. Maybe he shouldn't have told AndrAIa and Mouse to go, but then again, he could see that they'd already taken down both of the bridges. Bob grabbed some of the binomes attacking Matrix, noticing that they were biting him, too. The renegade's uniform wasn't quite as protective as Bobs, and he could see a nasty patch of white forming around the bruises.

"Matrix, shoot the center of the bridge!"

"Got it!" A one had grabbed the green sprite's bicep, and Bob punched it in the middle third of its body, taking it down even as Matrix fired. The bridge collapsed with a screeching sound that the Guardian didn't like at all. But, he supposed, a little damage was expected in a major fight against a virus. Matrix grabbed one of the binomes, intent on throwing it at the wall, but stopped himself with a worried exclamation. This one was just a little kid! "What are we supposed to do with the rest of them?"

Bob looked around, pushing another monotone viral away. "They're slow, and over the whole PO, there's not that many. As long as we're not in the middle of this _knot_ ," he said, with another shove, "we'll be fine. Split up, it might confuse them... You get Mouse and AndrAIa, I'll get Dot, we'll meet on the other side of the building."

Matrix nodded and pushed his way through the crowd of binomes, turned, and put the child down before sprinting off towards the now-downed Wall Street bridge. Bob did much the same, exiting the crowd with as little force as he could manage and heading towards the link between the Principle Office and Baudway.

The first bridge was down, and Bob quickly jogged to the next sector conserving his energy in case he needed a sudden burst of speed. The second bridge, the one that connected the central sphere with Kits' sector, was also down, but Bob noted with some alarm, Dot was holding her damaged hand while leaning against the giant pillar that housed the quick release. He ran over to her, his eyes taking in the paleness of her skin that seemed to be spreading from—

"One of the infected bit you?" he asked.

Dot was shaking slightly, but nodded. "Go protect the system," she said. "I'll be fine, I just got too close. They don't seem very interested in me, though... I keep feeling annoyed, like before. It must be Megabyte."

Bob shook his head, and took hold of her hand, looking at her palm critically. "It doesn't look too bad," he said, trying to give her a reassuring smile even as he looked at the fine white line running along her wrist. "We'll have Matrix bandage it a bit more, and you'll be fine. How did it happen?"

"Mrs Paisley was at the bridge release controls. I had to get her out of the way." Dot shrugged, then took a sudden breath in, her eyes going distant, her mouth slackening. Just as quickly, she shook her head and looked at Bob with alarm. "He's _coming_. We have to go."

Bob's mouth pursed, and he pulled her up and to his side to stop her from wobbling. "Come on," he said. "Look, they're taking down the last bridge." His pace was a little slowed as he dragged Dot with him to the final connection to the system, alert for any more of the binomes... or _worse_. He was worried. In a normal situation, he could have moved the civilians out of the danger zones— into the city if Megabyte had taken over the central office, or somewhere in the Principle Office itself if Megabyte was damaging Mainframe itself. But with this situation, he couldn't see a safe place to put Dot. He hoped that she was imagining it, but if Glitch's scan was right, she might be _broadcasting_ to Megabyte even now.

"Bob, Dot!" Mouse gave them one of her half-smiles, until she saw Dot shiver against Bob. "You alright, Sugar?"

"One of those binomes bit her," said Bob unhappily.

AndrAIa tilted her head. "Really? One of them bit me." Matrix took a quick inhale of breath and looked at the woman he loved with worry and concern. "Relax, lover. I feel fine, it just stung a little." She pointed at her leg. "The bite mark's already closed and everything."

"Maybe game sprite code's as good as Guardian code for protection," replied Bob. He was a lot more concerned about Dot, since she was the one who seemed to be having trouble. Megabyte shouldn't be able to infect a sprite, especially not via an infected binome, but he wasn't going to rule anything out. "Mouse, I need to get Glitch back online so I can scan Dot."

"No," said Dot. "You _need_ to contain Megabyte."

"And I need Glitch for that, too," he said stubbornly. "Mouse, what do I need to do?"

"Well, now..." Mouse looked at Bob, Dot and Glitch with concern. "There _is_ an override command set," she said. "One in each sector. But that won't amount to a hill of bytes in the Principle Office. I set the signal up so that they couldn't use 'em against us there."

"Can you turn it off via a command line?" asked AndrAIa.

"No, it's... well, it's hardware, not software. I don't know how we could disrupt it, other than..."

"Other than what?" Bob asked.

"The DMA transfer," said Mouse, looking apologetically at Dot.

The green sprite sighed. "You're sure you can't do it without Glitch?" Bob shook his head, and she shivered again. "All right. We should be able to interrupt it." She looked up at the sky. "We did it during the war, we can do it again."

"Do you know how to do it? It would take an hour to fix any kind of damage to that part of the system. And won't that take down power in the city?" asked AndrAIa.

Mouse nodded. "About 40 per cent of it," she said, tilting her head and shrugging. "That's _why_ it'd work."

Dot closed her eyes and leaned heavily against Bob. He let out a breath and shook his head. He couldn't damage the city to get Glitch back online. "What if we... lure him out into the city?" asked Bob. "He wants a hunt, we give him one out there. We can deal with these overrides Mouse was talking about."

"We just cut the bridges, Bob. And with all those binomes swarming around... A fight out there is a fight _he_ wins," said AndrAIa.

"We could take him," disagreed Matrix. "We just have to choose our ground carefully. There's open space around Dot's, or we could lure him over to Lost Angles—"

"No," said Dot, her eyes opening suddenly. "We need him in the Principle Office behind a firewall. That's the only way this ends."

"Dot... I..." Matrix looked at her sheepishly. "I kind of damaged the firewall in the containment room."

Dot's eyes focused on him, outraged. "You _what?"_

"Bob wouldn't turn it off!"

"User," she said softly, then took a deep breath. "Fine, we'll work around it. The armory still has some of the old hardware we used to make the original firewall around G-Prime. Mouse, do you think you could make the calculations to stabilize them?"

"Reckon I could," said Mouse brightly.

Dot nodded and let out a breath. "I'm glad you're here, Mouse. I don't think any of the rest of us could manage that. You and Bob go to the armory, set that up. Matrix, AndrAIa, you're going to need to do the interrupt. I'll go to the Pinnacle and get the command line set up."

"No one goes alone," protested Bob. _Especially not you_ wasn't said, but everyone heard it regardless as Bob pressed her closer to his side and she shivered again.

Dot closed her eyes again and nodded. "We need to force him out of the war room anyways. All right, two longer missions. Bob and I will do the interrupt, then head for the Pinnacle. Mouse, AndrAIa, I'll need the two of you to blow the power to the war room—"

"What!?"

"A hardware burnout. AndrAIa knows the engineering lines well enough to target it. That will disrupt his command lines and lock him out of the systems. The best command line he can get to after that will be the one in the Core. He'll head for _us_ , Bob. We'll distract him. Mouse will get the firewall set up in the armory and send Glitch a signal, and... you'll get him into it."

"What about me, Sis?"

"No one goes alone," Dot said, but shrugged. "I'd like to have a Guardian with each team, but maybe it's better if you come with me and Bob..."

Mouse looked at her, narrowing her eyes. "I think he should come with us. Give the pair of you some more time to work together."

"Mouse..."

"Bob don't need _Matrix_ to keep you safe, Sugar. Do ya, Bob?"

The blue guardian smiled at the hacker. "No, I don't." He paused to look down at her. "You trust me, don't you, Dot?"

"Sure. It's _me_ that's the zombie process," she muttered as she shivered again. "All right. Let's get this over with. Everyone ready?"


	2. Explosive Forces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matrix, Mouse and AndrAIa head to the EPS relay room to break Megabyte's access to command line functionality; Dot and Bob head off to set up a DMA interrupt.

"Scalin' the inside of the Principle Office ain't something I was expecting to be doing when I agreed to be a bridesmaid," said Mouse as she climbed up over the ledge.

AndrAIa smirked. "At least you two get a rope! My fingers are _killing_ me," said the game sprite. Several of her turquoise nails were still embedded in the walls where she'd used them to help her scramble up the edge of the wall. "Tell me again why we couldn't use zip boards?"

"Because they'll trigger the security," Matrix called from his position below the female sprites.

AndrAIa leaned out over the edge so the green sprite could see her roll her eyes and laugh. "You know I was joking, Matrix!" Mouse shook her head at the young couple, grabbed the rope and pulled it to herself, running it through her belt, then around herself before tossing it to AndrAIa. The game sprite pulled it around herself as well, and both sprites sat, legs braced as well as they could manage against two separate wall. AndrAIa threw the end of the rope down to the big green renegade. "We're all set up here, whenever you're ready!"

Two floors down, Matrix wrapped his hands around the rope and tugged carefully, then, slowly as he could, adjusted himself until most of his weight was on the rope. "You two good?"

"Hurry it up down there, Matrix! We don't got all second, you know!"

Matrix nodded to himself and began walking up the edge of the wall, as quickly as he dared. Above him, Mouse's muscles strained against the weight: her katana and the workouts to keep herself sharp helped her, but she had the feeling the strange way that this pulled was going to leave her sore in the morning cycle. AndrAIa was a little more at home with this sort of activity, but her jaw was set in concentration as she struggled to keep herself stable while her lover climbed to greet them.

His dark hair peeked over the edge of the wall, then his eyes, then finally, the rest of him seemed to arrive all at once as the mountain of green skinned muscle flipped up with a grace that belied his size.

"Phew. That man is _heavy_ ," said Mouse.

"He's usually the one lifting me up," replied AndrAIa with a shrug. "I guess it's only fair that I help him sometimes."

Matrix rolled his eyes and grabbed the rope, tying it around his waist. "At least going down two floors shouldn't be as hard as going up," he said. His eye flipped and he looked around, scanning the area. "I'm picking up two of the monochromes, but the PO defenses still look like they're ignoring us."

"Good," said AndrAIa. "Then let's get going."

The three moved down a hallway, Matrix taking point. AndrAIa and Mouse walked behind Matrix in a triangular formation, the game sprite to his left, her trident at the ready and her ears listening for the sound of any system activation, while Mouse took the right, walking half backwards with her katana out, sharp and viscious curve quite prepared to take out anything that Megabyte might send at them.

They passed a few of the internal offices, places where system paperwork was processed, where documents were prepared before being saved into the archives, but the doors were all closed. If there were binomes behind them, none came out to bother the three as they cautiously made their way through the hallway.

At length, the three reached a locked doorway and swapped places, Mouse taking the front position while Matrix and AndrAIa watched the hacker's back. She brought up a console and began inputting commands while the others stood behind her. There wasn't much to a doorway lock like this one— Megabyte might have added some encryptions to the door at the war room, but he'd apparently overlooked the access hatches into the archives. The door opened inward and Mouse smirked. "Nothin's gonna stop the Mouse _this_ time. You're up, Matrix."

The three swapped places again as Matrix scanned the massive archives in front of them. His eye moved from target to target, Gun helping him to identify problem zones— and there were a number of them. "System defenses are hot in here," he muttered. The question was _why_. Most of the rest of the PO had been mazes and infected binomes. What was so different about the archive? He supposed they'd figure that out later. He mentally mapped out the hot areas and devised a quick strategy.

He turned to the women. "This isn't going to be easy, but we should be able to make it. We'll go down one at a time." He looped the rope over a nearby stabilizing bar and let one end fall towards the far distant floor. "Most of the angles are wrong, but..." The renegade pointed out at a few metal hatches at kitty-corner angles from them. "There and there. Those are the most dangerous ones. I don't have a good angle to take them out from here, but if there's going to be activity, it'll come from behind those access panels. I'm detecting energy readings at our destination, so I'm going down first, and I'll take care of whatever's down there. Wait for me to signal, and I'll watch your backs when you start. And whatever you do, when you get out there, don't let go. It's a _long_ way down."

AndrAIa looked at the bar dubiously. "Is this thing going to hold you, Sparky?"

Matrix shrugged, grabbed the rope and gingerly moved his weight onto it. The bar held, though it bent slightly. "Remember: wait for my signal before you start. I'll see you both down there," he said, then took his first step out into the archive room.

The response from the system defenses was immediate. Hatches opened throughout the archive room, and double barreled mini-cannons began to fire at him. Live ammo— Matrix smiled grimly at the thought that his continued training had made sure he was still in top form for this new effort against a hostile virus. No matter what anyone said, he was going to keep training!

Matrix let himself slide as much as he dared down the rope, his palms burning against the rough material, then used the archive walls to run left and right. The walls beside him were being scorched by the weapons fire, but the renegade kept his speed up. He didn't have far to go— he'd slid down a floor, and now it was only one more floor down. He could see the access port door, still closed against invaders.

He weaved some more to dodge the weapons as he tried to more carefully bring himself down to the same level as the door, hoping to avoid further damage to his hands as he descended. As soon as he was at the door, he kicked it down, entering the relative safety of the room. The moment he was out of the main archives, the watching turrets quieted.

He surveyed the room with one hand still on the rope, Gun raising automatically to his other hand. Robot parts were piled up in the corner, and at a workstation was a familiar female sprite. "Dot...?"

Well, this was... _bad_. Very bad.

She looked up from what looked to be schematics. "Matrix?" She smiled automatically, but then her eyes narrowed. "Are you alone?"

"No, I—" He looked at the parts on the ground and tried to reason his way to a solution. The other Dot had said she'd been attacked... but how was he supposed to know the difference between the two Dots...? He shook his head. "How did you get here? What happened to Hack and Slash?"

" _Megabyte_ happened." She scowled. "We got cornered. Hack and Slash distracted him, and I managed to use one of the cheat codes to get through a wall. But... by the time I got back—" She nodded at the parts with a sigh. "I couldn't contact anyone, so I decided to see if I could rebuild them. Phong's got their schematics in here somewhere."

She shook her head, then looked at Matrix and his rope, her expression tentative. "You were with Bob, right? Is he okay? Is he up there?"

Matrix looked at her uncertainly, Gun lowering as he tried to think. If that Dot was the real one, telling this Dot was really telling Megabyte all the plans. But if the other Dot was _fake_ , then that meant Bob was alone with a virus who wanted revenge and had made up the plans, and _this_ Dot needed to know. Bob had been so sure of the other Dot's identity, and even Matrix had been convinced, but... well, this Dot seemed to be acting normally, too, and Megabyte hadn't had any real difficulty in convincing the renegade that he was Bob...

"Let me get everyone down here," he said finally, tying the end of the rope to the console in the middle of the room. "Stand over there," he said, motioning towards a section of the room where the weapons wouldn't be able to hit her. He turned and raised Gun. His team would need covering fire. "You can come down now!"

He tried to keep Dot in his sights as the other two women descended, but his attention needed to be on the automatic weapon systems. AndrAIa came down first, quick and lithe. Her hands wrapped around the rope and she swung herself down, zigzagging as she descended in the same way she did during games. It was enough to confuse the turrets for a few picos. Once Matrix started firing, the guns all aimed towards him, and he smiled a little as he fired, taking one of them out before the game sprite had managed to reach him.

She landed in the room with a front flip. "Show-off," said Matrix, as she looked between Matrix and Dot for a moment. She was clearly as worried about the development as the renegade was, but the game sprite didn't have time to say anything as Matrix called out to Mouse. "Next!"

The hacker was just as fast as AndrAIa, and Matrix wondered how she'd cultivated her skills without having spent her youth in games. Gun fired over and over, drawing fire from the second turret as Mouse descended the rope. She came in laughing with her enjoyment. "Sugars, that oughtta be a— Oh. Dot."

"Hi, Mouse," said Dot, looking out at the door. "Is Bob next?"

Mouse and AndrAIa looked at each other. "No, Dot. Ah... Well, Sug, he's with... _Dot_."

"What— Oh." The green sprite's eyes widened for a moment, then she leaned back against the wall, her eyes closing tightly against the news. She slid down it until she was sitting next to the pile of Hack and Slash. "You mean he's with _Megabyte_ ," she said quietly. "And you mean you don't know if _I'm_ Megabyte."

The three sprites looked at each other again. "Well," said AndrAIa, "can you prove who you are?"

Dot leaned her head back against the wall and shook it. "No. Even if I got Hack and Slash back online, they wouldn't be able to vouch for me," she said, then frowned. "What are you three doing here, anyways? The archives won't get you to the war room."

"We're not _going_ to the war room. The other Dot gave us a way to get to an elevator," said AndrAIa. She looked at Mouse, who shrugged. "We're taking down the power so that virus can't use the command lines in the war room against us."

Dot thought for a moment, then nodded. "It would be a good plan if he was actually there," she said reluctantly. "But I can't see why he'd want to shut down power to the war room, unless it was just to mimic something _I'd_ say. Was there anything else to it?"

The three sprites looked at each other uncertainly again, and Dot sighed. "I get it. You trust _him_ more than me."

Matrix shook his head and put a hand on Dot's shoulder. "I don't know _who_ to trust right now, Sis. You both seem like Dot..." He looked at the other two sprites, almost hoping that one of them would argue and make this choice easier, but neither spoke. After a nano, he sighed. "We can't leave you here alone. We're headed to the encapsulated postscript relay room. Once we've turned off the power to the war room, whatever control Megabyte has will be gone, and he'll be forced to look elsewhere."

Dot nodded and stood while Matrix pulled out Gun again while the hacker and the game sprite looked at the scene. With none of them entirely willing to believe this was Dot, it was clear that _she_ couldn't lead the team. Matrix and Mouse both looked too worried about Dot to be making objective decisions. AndrAIa let out a sigh. "Matrix, you take point," she said decisively. "Mouse and I will take up the rear, and Dot, you stay in the center."

With that, the group started out again, heading down a corridor and taking a left at the first junction, then a right at the next, then another left and a right. The elevator was in sight.

"Do you hear that?" asked AndrAIa. "It sounds like... pong?"

"Pong?" Dot turned, and far down one of the hallways, thought she saw the lazy path of Phong's favorite toys. "It's the system defenses! The pucks are explosive, he used this against us before— We need to hurry!"

With that, Dot began running towards the elevator. The other two women were a little slow to start, but quickly caught up with the system commander, hot on her heels as they tried to reach their destination before the defenses could catch up with them. Matrix hung back a little, letting the other three pass him as he walk-ran backwards. Gun was more than ready, and he took a shot. One of the pucks was hit, a tear in its wake, but it wasn't enough to stop the rest.

"Gun, Death Blossom mode—"

"Matrix, not in the PO, they could end up tearing through essential processing! Get over here instead!" called AndrAIa. Mouse was beside her, busily pressing keys on the elevator's control panel while Dot looked on anxiously beside her. The elevator door opened suddenly with a swishing sound and the women went in.

With a scowl, Matrix ran to join them, sliding into the small room as the door closed. Beyond the door, a barrier went down. The four sprites tensed and waited as the game pucks hit the barrier, percussive, explosive thumping audible through the door.

After a nanosecond, it was over. They were quiet, waiting to see if any more would hit the doors.

Dot was the first to speak. "Do you think the elevator will still work?"

Mouse shrugged. "Only one way to find out... last part of the cheat code." She reached out to the buttons that showed the floors and held down three of them. "Beta, Alpha, Start." They waited with baited breath as the time passed... five picos, ten... then, in front of Mouse, a small holographic display popped up. "Jackpot," said the hacker, as she began manipulating it.

Everyone let out a sigh as the sound of filtered music began playing through the little box that contained them, and the elevator began moving with only a slight hitch. Above them, an LED display of floor numbers began increasing as they started moving towards their destination.

"Do you think we did something?" AndrAIa asked after a moment. "To get the PO defenses after us, I mean."

Dot tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"They weren't active until we got to the archive," said Matrix with a shrug, then looked down at his weapon. "But I used Gun in the archives, so that's probably—"

"What do you mean, they weren't active?" Dot looked at Matrix with confusion, and the others looked at her with their own sets of questions. "They've been coming after _me_ since Hack and Slash got taken apart." She looked at the group, then pulled her icon off, examining it for a nano. "Do you think he's tracking me?"

"It wouldn't be out of the question," said Mouse. "But I can't analyze your icon for any... _tampering_. Not here, Sugar."

Dot looked at the hacker in alarm. " _Tampering_? You mean, you think he had access to—" Dot swallowed and put her icon back on her chest, her hand shaking slightly, though whether she was feeling rage or fear, it was hard to say. "It's not enough that he tried to marry me. You think he tampered with my code. I think I'm going to be _sick_."

"Dot, don't think like that," said AndrAIa. "Mouse doesn't have a scanner, she's just putting out an idea of how he could be targetting you. We don't know that he did anything at all... And even if he did, it's probably nothing that serious. A _tracker_ could do it just as well. Once we have control of the principle office again, we can undo whatever he's done. I'm sure Bob will know what to do about everything, the Guardian Academy taught him all sorts of things about security."

If anything, Dot began to look a bit despairing but she held her own council.

Matrix nodded. "Dot, once we're done with the EPS relay, you and I will meet Bob and... well, _her_ up at the pinnacle, and we'll work this whole thing out. He'll figure it out."

"Figure out which of us is me, you mean? I don't know if he can. _I_ couldn't."

"Sug, I told you. You didn't know. If you'd known one of those Bobs was Megabyte—"

The door opened with a ding, cutting Mouse off. "Look, let's just—" Dot took a deep breath, centering herself, then stepped out of the elevator. "Let's just get the power offline, if you all think it's still going to help."

"Don't worry, Sis. It's going to be okay."

She looked down for a moment, then nodded and started walking purposefully in the direction of the relay room, while the other three sprites exchanged a worried look behind her before following in her footsteps. They had a job to do— more than one— and they were going to make sure to carry them out.

They arrived in the relay room soon after. The room was second only to the dangerous Core room, filled top to bottom with switches, access ports and cabling. Usually, a host of binomes would be stationed here, maintaining, optimizing and looking for any issues that would then be forwarded to the admin or the command.com, but now, the room was empty of anyone. "I wonder where everyone went," said Dot, a frown on her face.

Matrix shrugged. "It's a good thing they're not here," said the renegade. "Dealing with a bunch of infected binomes while AndrAIa's trying to do delicate modifications sounds like a pain in the ASCII."

AndrAIa raised an eyebrow at him. "Delicate? This is probably going to be a lot closer to brute force."

"Really? My specialty!"

AndrAIa grinned at Matrix. "Exactly. Can you get me through that wall, Sparky?" The renegade grinned back, and the pair began working together to find a way to get through the wall panels and into the main system circuitry that controlled power distribution within the principle office.

Dot watched them, head tilted, and Mouse put a hand on her shoulder. Dot looked over at Mouse with a moment's surprise, as though she'd forgotten the other sprite was in the room. "You okay, Sugar?"

Dot took a shaky breath. "Bob and I used to work like that, you know."

"You know how much that sprite loves you," she said, a soft smile on her face.

"I know, but..." She shook her head. "He's alone out there. What if Megabyte deletes him? What if he doesn't come back?" She shook her head and walked over to one of the relay switches, tapping on an IO bufer beside it. "Do you think you can get a message to him?"

Mouse walked over to look at the buffer, bringing up a virtual keyboard with a flick of her fingers. "Well... I don't rightly know," said Mouse, her mind moving suddenly through algorithms, trying to figure out whether or not she could fulfill the command.com's request. "There _is_ communication equipment here, but I'm not sure how that old virus is blocking VidWindows..."

"But you'll try?"

"Sure, Sug. Give the Mouse some space, okay?"

Mouse watched out of the corner of her eye as Dot nodded and started moving around the room, looking at the various conduits and RAM cycling equipment while the other sprites were busy at their respective tasks. There wasn't much for her to do right now; no one needed a plan, since the _other_ Dot had given them one, so she was at loose ends... at least, until she saw the monochrome binome hiding herself behind a console.

"Come out from there," she said, reaching a hand out to the infected.

Matrix threw a look over at her. "Hey, careful with those. They bite."

The zero-binome looked at Dot and closed her eyes, then shook her whole body with a no. "I'm not letting her just hide back there," she muttered. Dot squeezed herself behind the console, slowly, then reached out a hand and touched the binome's.

The zero's eyes closed for a moment, and Dot took the opportunity to pull hard on the small hand, dragging her out into the rest of the room. "Doesn't seem like it's biting now," she said.

Matrix looked over again. He was holding up a large panel, and with AndrAIa inside of it pas her shoulders, it was too heavy to drop it. " _Dot_ , that zero's infected, get away from it."

Ignoring her renegade brother, the green sprite examined the binome carefully. It was very desaturated, and while she had allowed Dot to take one of her hands, the binome had kept the other behind her back. "What have you got there?" asked Dot.

AndrAIa pulled herself out of the circuitry and looked over, her eyes widening in alarm. "Dot! That blinking light— it looks like a trigger—!"

"Get down!" Matrix grabbed AndrAIa and pulled her away to where Mouse was standing, pushing all three sprites to the ground. Dot was too far to join the others; her jaw dropped, her eyes widened, and she dove away from the binome in the opposite direction.

The zero binome closed her eyes and dropped the box.

* * *

"You know, I've heard this is the best view in the city," said Dot as they landed, her eyes looking out over the whole of Mainframe. "Why is it that I only come here to destroy it?"

"I am become Dot Matrix, destroyer of systems!" Bob said with a grin.

Dot looked at him with annoyance. "I'm really not in the mood for jokes."

Bob put his hands up and his head down for a nano. "Okay, sorry. But Gigabyte was much scarier than this, don't you think?" She glared a moment more, then shook her head. He put a hand on her shoulder and looked at her seriously. "Are you really up for this? How are you feeling?"

She shrugged slightly. "Better, I think. Not as cold as before." Bob sighed silently as she turned away from him. That hadn't been what he was asking... But she walked over to one of the panels andknelt, pushing down on a flange to let it snap open, then stared into the wiring. "There's more here than I remember..."

Bob crouched down next to her and looked in. There were an awful lot of the packed into a really small space. He put a hand in and tried to trace one. "So... You and Mouse did this before?" Bob asked.

She hummed for a moment. "During the war. Seige?" She paused and looked at him with a strange ambivalent expression, then looked back into the wiring with a shake of her head. "When you let him win."

_Ouch_. His shoulders stiffened slightly. The way she'd said that sounded pretty final, but Bob pushed a bit on it. "You never told me you were taking hardware down."

"No." She traced a red wire from one end to the other, then disconnected one end. There was a momentary hitch in the processing, and Bob tapped Glitch, but the keytool simply made a few negative beeping sounds, not even a full sentence.

"I guess we were really lucky the User restarted. Even if Megabyte hadn't sent the system into a near collapse, it would have taken hours to fix things. So how much of the hardware damage was from our side?" he asked curiously.

She glanced at the Guardian sidelong, that same ambivalent, even slightly angry expression on her face. She pursed her lips, then shrugged, looking away. "I don't _know_ , Bob." She shook her head. "I'd rather not talk about it. That siege was... _awful_. I thought we'd figured this out. You don't talk about the web, I don't talk about Megaframe."

Bob raised his eyebrows. "Isn't that just because we don't _talk_?" Bob asked. "I talk about the web with AndrAIa and Matrix. Enzo, too. Not to mention Phong and Turbo. The two of them are always asking questions about this or that. How does the web work, really? What's happening during a torrent? Does a DDoS always cause that much damage?"

Dot sighed. "Well, _I_ don't talk about it."

"Not even with Mouse? Or Phong?"

"Mouse was _there_ , we don't need to talk about it. And Phong..." She paused, her hands stilled over the various components for a moment, then shook her head. "If he really wanted to know, he'd look through the system journal entries. I don't need to keep bringing those memories back up."

Bob frowned. "Dot... that's not why we haven't been talking, is it?"

She let out another annoyed breath, shook her head and pulled another cable. "I don't know, Bob. Is Glitch back online?"

The keytool beeped morosely. "No, not yet. Dot, I— Do you... _blame me_? For Megaframe?"

She pulled her hands out and they turned into fists. Her eyes were focused on the wires as she replied. "I said I don't want to talk about this."

"I think maybe we need to."

Dot turned to look at him, her eyes as cold as her frozen expression. "I don't blame you, okay? But may I remind you that we have a virus loose in the system? One that probably has my little brother format in his clutches. We need a win here, not a discussion of critical failures."

She took a breath, reset her hands and turned back to the components. Bob bit the inside of his cheek. Maybe now was just a bad time to have this discussion. "I think we should just pull all the wires," he said, tentatively.

"I'm trying to do this with a minimum of damage," she said sharply, then sighed, her shoulders sinking. "I wish Specky were here. He'd probably know exactly what to pull, and in what order."

Bob nodded. "I'm sorry, Dot. I know you don't want to do this, but I _need_ Glitch if I'm going to get him in that firewall."

Dot shook her head. "Look, it's not your fault. If Mouse and I hadn't—" Sudden light, then a moment later, audio and a lossy compression wave came at them. Bob turned to look at the Principle Office, seeing a large hole in the wall. "No!" Dot's eyes were wide, and her eyes were slightly unfocused. A loud buzzing noise filled the entire system around them, and a strange light was beginning asweep, moving quickly over the edges of Baudway sector. " _Spam_... what's he done?"

Bob watched the light as it touched a large banner and tore right through it.

Whatever had happened over there in the Principle Office, they no longer had time. Bob pulled Dot away from the wires and grabbed them, pulling them all out at once. A tear exploded outwards, missing the Guardian by angstroms. Above them, the numbers blinked out all at once, and several sections of the ribbon track exploded into tears. Around them, lights blinked on and off, then dimmed significantly. Even the sky faded to a dim red emergency light.

Bob grimaced at the destruction, but what was done was done.

"Glitch?" The keytool gave a series of clicks and beeps. Thank the User for small meta tags... Bob visually scanned the city. With most of the lights off, infected monotone binomes could be seen only under the lights of tears. He wasn't sure, but it seemed like they were congregating under the bright balls of static energy. The far away light had slowed considerably in its tracks, perhaps at the lack of power, but it was now far brighter than anything else in the system.

"What _is_ that? Glitch, let's have a scan." With one arm held out in place, he reached out with the other to pull Dot to her feet, concerned by how she was looking at the tears. He couldn't quite place the expression, but it didn't belong on her face. "Dot, are you online? I still need your help here."

The green sprite closed her eyes at that and took a breath. "I think they're okay. They _must_ be okay," she whispered, and Bob wasn't sure if she was convinced by her own words, but she looked him straight in the eye after it, the determination and bravery back in place as if it hadn't just disappeared in the first place.

It was somewhat reassuring, but Bob worried that it was nothing more than a mask that she'd let slip for the first time since Daemon's destruction. Still... "Glitch says that's a security scan," he said. "Do you know about it?"

"Maybe. Turbo offered us some extra security while you were... We had a Guardian without a keytool, and... Megabyte said we should install it, and since we thought he was you—" She looked at Bob guiltily. "It's supposed to be able to target specific file formats, like viruses."

"Glitch, binoculars." He looked through them, adjusted, and winced as it passed over Dot's Diner, the restaurant catching fire. He offered the view to Dot. "I don't think that's targeting anything in particular."

"Unless it's trying to clear all the infected binomes in the city," she said. "It's going to destroy the system if we don't stop it." She shook her head in frustration. "This must have been his plan all along. Those monochrome virals are _everywhere_. At least it's moving slowly. We can turn it off at an admin command line. We just need to stick to the plan. Let's get to the Pinnacle."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you see the Konami code? :D Wait. Do people still remember the Konami code? :o


	3. Bug in a Rootkit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dot's plan plays out, with a few additional complications.

"Bob?" She zipped in front of him suddenly and stopped their forward progress bodily; it was a good thing Bob was excellent at zip board flying, or he might have fallen. They were very close to their destination at the top of the Principle Office. "He's going to be there."

"Probably," said Bob impatiently. They didn't have time for this discussion _now_.

"He _is_. He's watching us from right down there." She pointed at the white sphere, closed her eyes for a moment, then held up her hand. "You said you thought those infected binomes were connected to him." She took a breath to keep herself calm, but Bob thought he could see panic in the back of her eyes. "I think he's in my head."

Bob nodded slowly. Maybe they had time for _this_ discussion, if only to help her calm down. He reached out and took hold of her hand, examining it carefully. Matrix's patch job seemed to be holding up, the splint on her wrist still intact, her fingers still more or less straight. The bite mark wasn't any worse, the pale lines no more or less than before. Nothing a visual inspection could give him.

"Glitch, infection level scan."

The keytool let out a golden light that passed through Dot's hand before it gave him the results he was looking for. Odd... Glitch thought it was working properly, and yet the readings he was getting were completely inconclusive. Severe power level dips, jump branches, obfuscated recursions and a series of lambda functions... there was some amount of networking there, too, but extremely weak.

He wasn't sure what he was looking at, and likely wouldn't without a full scan and analysis.

She looked at him anxiously and he considered what he might say for a moment, but realized it wasn't going to change his next actions. He wasn't going to leave her _here_ , on her own. If he overplayed it, she'd argue with him... there was no need to scare her. It was probably benign.

"Looks passive," he said finally, dropping her hand. He thought for a nano or two, considering what he'd seen of Megabyte's new powers. Trojan horse, but he'd spent his time pretending to be Bob, he hadn't built up a viral army. No news of any infections until after he'd been unmasked, and the infected he'd seen had all been binomes. The acid breath was new, but it was a physical attack. "He's still a class three virus. He's never been able to infect a sprite," Bob said finally, in a voice meant to reassure Dot. "I don't think that's part of his new powers, either. He _might_ have read access, but he doesn't have execution."

Bob glanced down at the hole in the Principle Office, still burning below and to their left, then behind them at the lance of light in the sky that was slowly making its way around the Mainframe streets in Baudway with destructive results. Dot followed his gaze for a pico, then gave a determined shake of her head. "Let's get going then," she said. "We have a virus to defeat."

Bob nodded seriously and led them down to the Pinnacle. There wasn't much here, few places to hide... not that Bob thought Megabyte would bother to hide anyways. Maybe Dot was imagining things. That would be a better case scenario. "I don't see him. Where is he?" asked the Guardian, looking around.

"I don't know, not exactly..." Dot walked to the center of the platform, then gasped.

"Pinnacle descend," called out Dot's voice. Bob turned to see them, two Dots standing nose to nose, each with an identical look of bravado on their face.

He rushed over to the pair. "I take my eyes off of you for one nano," he said. Which one was which?

"Sorry, Bob," they said together, then both made the same face. It was like looking at Hex's mirror... The uneasy descent into the core continued as Bob tried to come up with a solution. One Dot had an injured hand, but the other had some light burn marks, so it wasn't as though either looked like Megabyte, fresh and ready to fight. He might know which one was which, but that wasn't quite enough information to figure out which one was actually Dot.

"When we get down there, Bob, just stick with the plan. Don't worry about me."

The other Dot nodded. "He didn't delete me before, he won't now. We're alike in that way, aren't we... We both have _plans_."

Bob shook his head. "Oh, that makes _me_ really confident about this," he muttered. "Why don't you two go to opposite ends of the platform so I don't have to watch you?"

Two sets of eyes glanced at him in annoyance as the core control chamber came into view below them. The multiple doorways ringing the room were inert, but the Gateway command in the center of the room was nowhere near as inactive as Bob hoped, given the power outages in the rest of the system.

"Bob, get to the command line," said one of the Dots. "That's an order from this system's command.com."

The other one's eyes narrowed. "What are you up to...? Are you still trying for the Gateway?" She pursed her lips. "Either way, Bob, both of us need you at that command line."

The Guardian shook his head. "No way. He'll delete you. Whichever one of you is the real you."

"The system comes first," said Dot, and the other nodded in agreement.

Bob shook his head again, raising Glitch stubbornly. How long would Megabyte prolong this stalemate? Would he let the system be destroyed before he revealed himself?

Apparently, he was not willing to wait that long after all. One of the Dots was suddenly inside his defenses, kissing him passionately— probably Megabyte, Dot wouldn't— the other Dot screamed and knocked the first down, and suddenly, the two were fighting on the ground, pulling each other's short hair and yelling unintelligibly.

There was no way to tell one from the other now. They were both in the form of Dot Matrix, surely that would mean neither would destroy the other— if either one of them _did_ , the virus would blow his cover, and if he'd wanted to do that, he wouldn't have bothered looking like the Command.com in the first place. That's what he hoped, anyways, because getting in the middle would leave him _and_ the real Dot open to being deleted. Without a good way to interrupt the fight, Bob's training took over. The Dots were right: the system _had_ to take priority, even over this. "Command line!" he called, and made an A-star path to the window that opened near the Gateway.

He typed a halt command for the system scan, but the system response required a password. "Where's Mouse when you need her?" He'd heard Phong's password before, and tried using Yaddyaddayadda, but the command refused to execute.

"System error. Resetting power scan."

"Resetting? Glitch, status—" The keytool beeped, and Bob took in a quick breath. There were three of these things now, wreaking havok in the system. "That frozen _clob_...! They've multiplied!" He had to shut them down, _now_ , or Megabyte was going to get that revenge he wanted...

In the midst of the chaos, Mouse's symbol showed up on Glitch for a fraction of a nano. Bob smiled grimly. At least that part of Dot's plan was ready and waiting.

"Enough of this, Ms Matrix!"

Bob looked up to see Megabyte in his viral form, one hand pinning Dot to the ground while the other was raised up, claws extended. Without thought, Bob rushed him as the virus's arm descended, pushing Megabyte away so that he only grazed the female sprite as he was forced back a few steps. Dot's eyes were wide in shock, and she touched her arm, smearing the energy from the cut she'd received as Bob moved to place himself in the small space he'd made between her and the virus.

"Dot, I'll handle him! The scan is still active, shut it down!"

"Right, I'm on it," she said, pulling herself together.

Megabyte ground his teeth together. "Still working well together, I see."

Bob narrowed his eyes. "Do you really think I'm going to let you beat us?"

"I've _already_ won on that front, Bob. You just don't know it yet." He smiled at the Guardian as Dot cursored at the console behind him.

Bob hands clenched into fists and he blinked. In the time it took to do that, Megabyte had moved, his arms claws flying towards his head. Bob dodged under them and Glitch gave him a set of energy knuckles that he used to slam into the virus's abdomen. Megabyte grunted, pivoted, and kicked the guardian's legs out from under him; Bob rolled as giant claws came down towards his head, embedding themselves in the floor for long enough to give him time to stand.

Still, the virus rushed towards him before Bob had fully recovered, Megabyte's greater bulk slamming into the blue sprite until he was pinned against the edge of one of the file transport frames. Dark metallic hands went around his throat, squeezing tightly. Megabyte gave a cruel smile and leaned closer to Bob. "It would have been an amusing pity if you'd deleted yourself, Guardian. That is _my_ function."

Bob's hands were trying in vain to move Megabyte's, unable to speak, but Glitch was no longer content to wait for commands from its bonded guardian. The keytool activated itself, sending a strong beam of high energy into Megabyte's eyes, the effect mimicking the virus's own acidic breath. Bob dropped to the ground, panting to try to recover as Megabyte staggered backwards.

It wasn't exactly silent between them, but the non-violent time out was broken by Dot's voice. "How do I stop this, Megabyte?"

"Why would I tell you that, Ms Matrix?" Bob looked up to see her standing between him and the virus. He pushed himself to his feet. Megabyte was still holding his hands over his eyes, but he towered over the woman in front of him, and Bob figured he could take her out between one breath and the next if Megabyte so chose. "But there's a way for find out, isn't there..."

Bob had almost caught his breath by the time he got to Dot, and he pushed her behind him, her eyes stonily focused on the virus. "And what's that?" asked Bob.

Megabyte opened his eyes and grinned at Dot. "If she gives up, I will tell her."

"Giving up is not in my programming," she said, her voice tight and controlled. "I won't let you destroy Mainframe."

"No?" The virus refocused on Bob. "You cannot possibly win," he said. Megabyte's eyes darkened and he sent several tentacles off of his back at the pair. Glitch stopped them with an energy shield that blossomed out between the sprites and the virus, but Megabyte advanced on them and began hitting the golden barrier with his fists, pushing Bob and Dot back towards the edge of the platform.

He had to take control back... couldn't do it with Dot behind him... they were too close to the edge now... He pushed forward against Megabyte's strength, but it proved to be too much for Glitch: the energy shield shattered against the golden viral claws. The virus laughed in triumph, pulling both arms up, ready to slash the Guardian into ribbons, but instead, there was a smashing sound and a sudden explosive force behind them. Megabyte's feet locked themselves into the floor, but the force pushed him backwards almost ninety degrees, arms flailing above him. Bob and Dot, lighter and without such defensive capabilities, were blown up and over the virus.

"Glitch, line!" It was the only thing that saved them from crashing into the power of the core itself below the platform— which seemed to be moving about dangerously, like the data C on a bad day. Bob caught Dot midair and swung them around the room, lowering them as quickly as he could. He let go of her as their feet touched the ground near one of the doorways, and Dot collapsed at his feet. "Dot!?" He knelt beside her, terrified as he recognized the energy dripping from her side. "No... no!" She was going to be erased. He knew Megabyte was behind him, but he couldn't turn.

She put her arms around him. "I'm sorry, Bob," she whispered.

"User— _please_ , Dot, you can't..." It was just like with Dixon, only this time it was a woman he _loved_ rather than just one he respected. Her bravery, her singleminded determination, the sprite that had let Mainframe though a seige and a war— all of that would be gone in a nano. He felt drained at the very thought. If only he could save her... he'd give _anything_ — "Ahhh!" A sudden pain in his shoulder combined with a sharper loss of energy caused him to collapse against her.

This was it. Deletion. He'd failed them all. He'd failed the system. He'd failed _Dot_ — his code rebelled at the notion. No! He had to keep going— he tried to stand, but his legs felt like jelly.

The ground shook slightly as Megabyte walked behind them, each step causing the pain in his arm to magnify. "I suppose I misjudged you, Ms Matrix," said the virus calmly. "But as I said before... you cannot _win_."

She was flickering in and out. Hardly all right— but what could Bob do? He turned his head slightly to see the tentacle in his arm. He felt like he was being drained of all his energy, like he was fragmenting again. He groaned. "Glitch... something..."

The keytool turned itself into a rotating saw and snapped Megabyte's appendage off. Bob tried to rise once again, but his eyes crossed. He couldn't focus, couldn't seem to push himself to his feet. How had the virus taken so much out of him so quickly?

If he could just... "Glitch, repair mode," he said quietly, and his keytool went to work on her for a moment, but then Megabyte kicked him away. "No..." With Megabyte's energy stealing tendril out of his body, he felt like some of his energy was returning, and he dragged himself to his feet, panting. "Megabyte! Your fight's with me!" He was hardly a fit target for the virus, and once again he thought of fragmentation as his words came out as weakly as his missing code.

Megabyte smiled at him. "My vengeance will be on _my_ terms. You have only yourself to blame, Bob," he said, splitting his attention between the two sprites. "Ms Matrix, have you reconsidered my offer?" She levered herself up against the frame of the file transferal device and stared at him defiantly. "Then I suppose I have no choice..." He turned and began to stomp towards Bob, every step slow and deliberate.

The guardian panted and waited for the virus to get close enough. "Glitch, narrow beam," said Bob, but his aim was sluggish and Megabyte moved quickly, batting his hand away with another of those tentacles and at the blue sprite's side before he could come up with another strategy. The virus pulled his arm up and spat in his face, the acidic breath blinding Bob once again. The virus smashed his shoulder with a closed fist; the guardian yelled in pain, feeling completely disoriented.

"Stop! Leave him alone!" Another blow came at him, this one knocking the breath out of Bob as his gut seemed to hit his lungs.

"This could end, you know," came Megabyte's voice, calm and methodical. The virus punctuated his words with blows to Bob's face, his legs, his arms. "I'll have my vengeance either way, but if you surrender... well, my darling, it needn't be Mainframe. Any system would do." A particularly savage attack to his torso made Bob cough wetly. If only he could think... he could—

"I surrender!" she cried, and the blows stopped.

Bob wiped acid and energy both from his face and opened his eyes painfully. He couldn't fail her, not again. "Dot, no. _Don't_ ," he said weakly, still in Megabyte's grasp.

"Bob, I can't let him— I _surrender_ ," she said, sitting up and staring directly at Megabyte. Bob didn't know how she had the strength to do it, but she did. "As long as we leave the system. We can go through the gateway. Wherever you want."

"Hm." Megabyte pulled Bob to him, into a parody of an embrace. "It is not the system you value most, Guardian. _This_ is my vengeance," he said in a soft and intimate tone. With that, Bob felt himself dropped to the floor unceremoniously. He pushed himself up to a seated position as he tried to catch his breath yet again. The pain was intense, but manageable, to an extent, and there was a warmth at his wrist as Glitch began to send healing data through him, pulling energy directly from the core to synthesize it.

"Let me say goodbye," said Dot.

"Certainly, Ms Matrix." Megabyte smiled indulgently. "It will be the last time he sees you, after all. A proper goodbye is only polite."

Bob tried to stand, but his arms wouldn't hold him enough to let him rise just yet. Glitch might be healing him as fast as it could, but he wasn't sure how long it would take, how much would be enough, and in the meantime... He couldn't let this happen. He had to _do something_... Dot had crawled her way over to him while Megabyte watched. She put her hands on his face, her eyes wide and frightened. "Don't go with him," Bob whispered to her. "It'll be fine. I'll find a way out of this."

She shook her head. "He'll destroy you. He'll destroy the system. I _can't_. I can't let him win."

"This _is_ letting him win, Dot." He lifted his uninjured arm gingerly and closed his eyes for a moment, then lay his palm on her face. "You know me, seat of my pants. I will find a way out. Just trust me," he said.

She looked at him for a nano. Her breathing was loud in the quiet that Megabyte had, for his own reasons, given to them. Her eyes scanned his face and closed her eyes for a moment, then she shook her head, eyes opening and fully in command mode once more. "The binomes out there are data seeking. Flood the system all at once and they'll recover."

His eyebrows knitted together. How could she possibly know that? "Dot—"

"That explosion disabled the scans, and caused a lot of damage. That needs to be fixed first, for system stability, but when you get the power back on, those scans will start again. Mouse needs to disable them before that happens." Her expression slipped suddenly, and she leaned in and kissed him, tears falling as she closed her eyes. As she finished, she squeaked in the back of her throat and her eyes opened again. "Listen, Bob, I'd give my life for the system. Just like you would. Just like Hex. You know I would."

He shook his head. No, no, no. He had to think of something. Glitch could lift them out of the way... no, he didn't have the strength to hold on to her. He could still fight Megabyte— that wouldn't work, if he couldn't hold _her_ , he definitely wouldn't pose a challenge to _him_. Maybe if he could drag them through the file transfer portals— only, she'd need to hold on to him for that to work— "You don't need to go with him, Dot," he said frantically.

She turned her head to look at Megabyte. "You need someone to operate the controls," she said breathlessly. "He knows the addresses of every major system. There's no one better than him." Megabyte looked at her with an eyebrow raised. She pursed her lips. "And there's no one else in the room."

"I'm not going to—"

" _Please_ , Bob." She took his hands and shivered, and then— What in the net was happening? Why was he suddenly thinking of Hex and her fragmentation through the net? A thousand masks, that instantaneous infection... "You can send us somewhere safe," she said, her words laden with meaning that he couldn't quite grasp. He stared at her. Somewhere safe... where was _safe_ for a virus and a sprite? There was no safe place he could send her. What did she mean?

He felt dazed. "I..."

Megabyte appeared to take that as an agreement. He sent out his tentacles again, this time encircling Bob and placing him at the gateway command controls. _Gentle_ wasn't exactly the word, but perhaps it wasn't as violent as it could be, even though it jostled all the injuries Megabyte had inflicted on him.

"Come here then, _my love_ ," said Megabyte. Dot looked at him and shuddered. Megabyte smiled for a moment, the viral eyes narrowing in delight, then met Bob's eyes and changed his form, never losing that delighted smile as he walked over to the green sprite, and offered her a blue hand. "Well, Dot, if it makes you more comfortable, I've taken a few bits of his code just now. Enough for appearance's sake."

She shivered, but took his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. Bob stared in confusion— she'd been about to be deleted, how was she _standing_ now? But he didn't have time to think about that, because Dot took a deep breath and nodded.

Bob looked at the controls. "I can't... I can't do this..." He shook his head.

"Please, Bob. Do this for me. Just like my father did," she said quietly her eyes meeting his.

Oh, User, he'd been right. The thought rose up in him like a wave crashing over the the ships in the ports, and he felt sick. She wanted him to send them flying out to all the systems, fragmenting them like they'd done to Hex, that's why she'd said she'd give her life for the system. She wanted to do to Megabyte what she'd planned to do to Daemon, only this time, instead of Bob as live bait, it would be Dot herself, and she wasn't planning to survive it. When she'd said someplace safe, she'd meant someplace safe for _Mainframe_.

The virus in Bob's skin smiled nastily at the guardian and pulled Dot in closer to himself, another parody of their relationship. "You'll have more chance to find us in home territory, Bob," he said. "I'd suggest you send us to the Supercomputer."

He stared at Dot. Fragment them both? No. Dot's plan was ridiculous. And Megabyte's was even worse: send them to the Supercomputer? Bob didn't think so. There was another way, if only he could _think_ of it— Glitch beeped and did something it hadn't done before. He could see it now, a set of commands that would end the situation. A simple and elegant solution to the whole problem, ending at the firewall ready and waiting in the armory. Hopefully, it had enough power...

He put in an address, routed it through several others and pressed the button to activate the gateway. "It's a small system," he said. "A place called Rainmaker. I'll find you, Dot. I promise, I will find you." He hoped his acting was good enough as he turned an impotent anger towards the virus. "I _will_ find you," he said.

Megabyte raised an eyebrow and looked at Bob for a nano, then pushed Dot through with a grin. He barely waited a pico before he spoke, a curious tone. "Did you fragment her, as she wished?"

Bob shook his head, his hand balling into fists. "I would never hurt her," said Bob. "And if _you_ hurt her, I will—"

"Yes, yes." Megabyte smiled at Bob, taking him at his word. "I'll be sure to give her," he pasued and looked down at himself. " _Your_ love." There was cruel amusement in his voice, and then he stepped into the gateway.

Bob called for a command line and started typing immediately. "System resources," he muttered, "gotta love 'em... all right, secure tunnel to the armory for everything on the pinnacle—" One of the doorways on the edge of the platform expanded. "Glitch! Tractor beam!"

He grimaced and grunted at the effort it took to raise his arm to aim at the doorway and pull it over to the gateway command, and then over himself before letting it drop. He found himself in the armory with a group of highly surprised sprites.

"Bob?" Mouse was the first to recover as he appeared.

"We don't have much time. Dot and Megabyte are about to come out of that Gateway. He should be second, and he should look like me again— a little less damaged. Is there enough power for the firewall?"

"Just barely," said AndrAIa. "Hopefully nothing else goes down, because I've rerouted power from one of last system auxiliaries. I hope we aren't going to need the automatic system security back online."

While the game sprite spoke, Matrix pulled the Gateway over to the firewall entrance. Bob was thankful for the fact that the renegade didn't need explanations about how to deal with a virus. They worked together as though they'd been doing it forever. "We won't. AndrAIa, when Dot comes through, I need you to get her out of the way." He waited for the younger orange sprite to give him an agreement before turning his attention, as quickly as he could. "Megabyte should be on her heels, Mouse, be ready to turn on the firewall, Matrix, if it doesn't start, do _whatever it takes_."

The quartet waited in a moment of expectant anticipation until Dot stumbled out of the Gateway all at once and looked around in confusion. The game sprite moved quickly, pulling her off of the platform and to the side. Megabyte came out after her, in Bob's skin, and Mouse enabled the firewall. Thankfully, Matrix's skills weren't needed— but he pulled out Gun anyways, pointing it at Bob.

"Dot, we need you to confirm: which one is Megabyte?"

She blinked, looking at Bob with confusion, fear, a myriad of emotions flying across her face for a picosecond, and then... a mask came down. Commander Dot Matrix was in the room. "He's the one in the firewall. The real Bob has Glitch."

Matrix put Gun away slowly. "Then... we've got him? For real, this time?"

"Unless an alias can do _that_ ," she said, looking over at Bob for a nano. The energy that Glitch was feeding to him, a side effect of having been a single entity, was enough to allow Bob stand, to walk over to her, however weakly, to look at her injury with concern. "Okay, people, we're not done yet. We need to flood the city with data to help the binomes he infected, there's still a bunch of them _in_ the PO, and we've got to help Dad, Enzo, Phong, Specky... and anyone else still in the building. With _him_ in there, we can split up. The rest of the binomes shouldn't pose much danger.

"Matrix, you're still in good shape. I need you to find the remaining virals and put them somewhere secure. The monochrome ones, too. We'll have to manage them separately from the ones in the rest of the system."

"Don't worry, sis. I'll find them," said Matrix.

"War room first," said Bob. Matrix gave an acknowledgement, then turned and left.

"AndrAIa, I need you to find out exactly how much damage the system has taken. Don't turn anything on yet, we're going to need to coordinate that carefully to avoid restarting any of the security functions and drawing power from the firewall. Mouse, I need you to figure out how to make that data surge happen. We need to get everyone at once: if we miss any, the infection could start over." The two female sprites nodded and left.

Bob, Megabyte, Dot. Only the three of them were left in the armory now.

"Dot, I don't know how you're standing, but you should sit down." Dot looked at him for a nano, then stumbled over to the wall and slid down it. Bob rubbed his forehead before he did the same, taking a place on the floor next to Dot, keeping his eyes on the now contained virus. Glitch was busily restoring him to operational parameters, although he'd still need to get proper treatment. Then again, so did _she_. She'd been right there in the recycling bin. Where had she found the strength? Did the woman run on willpower alone?

"You're going to try to cure him, right?" she asked quietly, obviously trying to keep her voice down so that Megabyte couldn't hear her. Bob looked over at the virus. Safely caged, but he was still grinning like a Huffman with a sparse matrix. It was a bit unnerving, but Bob refused to let a bit of viral code in a firewall get to him.

"I'm _going_ to cure him," he replied.

"How?"

"I'm not sure, exactly. The theory isn't proven, so it's up to me to figure it out. But... he doesn't have a choice but to be this way, you know. Viruses are programmed to destroy, to corrupt..."

"When Gigabyte showed up, you said he might be benign. Is that a real thing? A virus that's not out to destroy and corrupt?"

Bob sighed. "If you asked Turbo and the rest of the guardians, they'd say no. For me... I just don't know. I used to think so, but... well, look at Hex. She wasn't really evil, and when she was a sprite, she was really _nice_. Right?" Dot nodded cautiously. "But then she got her power back, and it was like she didn't really understand us anymore. I think maybe... maybe that power that viruses have corrupts them."

"So you're going to take away Megabyte's power?" She looked skeptically at the virus who snarled at her from his prison cell. "I'm not sure you can do that. Look at him. His power is part of who he is. You'd have to _shrink_ him."

"It's a little more complex than that, but I think I can change the underlying data format, reconstruct it, restructure the power outputs and— look, Dot, no one knows exactly why viruses are so— well, _evil_ , but if we could change that, we could change everything."

"And what if you _can't_?"

Bob looked over at her. She looked angry, and ashamed, and most of all, _frightened_. He wanted nothing more than to fix that look. "I don't know. But I won't let him hurt you again, okay?" he said finally. "Speaking of, how's your side? He took a pretty good chunk out of you."

Dot touched her side for a moment, some energy sticking to her uninjured hand which she put in front of her face. He eyebrows drew together and she took a breath, then shrugged. "I guess it wasn't as bad as it looked."

"And your hand?" Dot brought it up in front of her and turned it over, the bite still a nasty shade of greenish-white. He touched her fingers, and she winced, breathing in sharply against the pain. "You should see a diagnostic."

"Maybe you missed the current system status update, but we don't have any available right now. Anyway, it doesn't hurt anymore," said Dot. "You're the one who needs a diagnostic. That _thing_ is still in your shoulder. I'm surprised you didn't ask Matrix to try to remove it for you."

"Hmph." He reached out cautiously for her hand. "Hey, Dot? The infected binomes... Megabyte didn't tell you how to fix them. Where did you get the idea for the data flood? Is that really going to work?"

"They're going for sprites and tears. It's data or energy, and we don't have the energy to spare." She looked at her hand again, touching the mark in the center. "Do you think this is going to leave a scar?"

"I don't know." He looked at the wound with a frown on his face. It was obviously bothering her more than the side, despite the relative impact of the injury. "He shouldn't be able to do anything through the firewall. You're not still having any effects, are you?"

"No, it just feels a little weird. _Cold_ , mostly..."

Bob nodded and looked at Megabyte for a moment before his eyes drifted to the gateway command, sitting there just outside of the firewall and let his mind drift for a nano. She'd been connected to Megabyte through that little bite mark. Megabyte had thought _Bob_ might delete her. Or had it been her thoughts? And if it was _her_ , then... how could she think it? He would never delete her. He couldn't see himself abandoning her, not by his own choice, anyways. But maybe _she_ thought he'd already done that...?

"Listen, Dot... about Megaframe." She glanced at him sidelong and didn't say anything. "You said you don't blame me, but—"

She looked at the firewall and scowled. "We both made the decision to work with the viruses. Phong said it was a bad idea. Mouse said it was a bad idea. No." She shook her head. "We _both_ made that decision. That loss is on both of us."

Bob nodded cautiously. "What was it like, when I was gone?"

She swallowed and looked at Bob for a moment, then turned her eyes to Megabyte. The virus was no longer snarling, but looking at the pair of them with a smile on his face. "He destroyed the system and he made me watch. He hurt everyone I cared about. Is that enough for your curiousity, Bob?" The virus's cheshire grin widened. "You know," she said in a loud voice, "he doesn't want to change. Maybe it would be better to delete him."

Bob frowned at her. "Because he hurt you?"

"Because he— because he deserves to be deleted. Maybe all viruses do."

He shook his head. Was this about Megaframe, the wedding, or this most recent hunt? "I just explained my plans." She looked at Bob for a moment, and he could see hurt lurking in the back of her eyes. "Dot, everything he's done is because of his programming. Just like you can't give up on Mainframe, he can't stop trying to create Megaframe."

She flinched. "He's manipulative and he's cruel. You can't change who he is, Bob."

"He doesn't have to _be_ that." Bob shook his head and let out an exasperated breath. "I'm not deleting him." He wasn't going to budge on that, not at all.

"Fine," she said shortly, then stood up. Bob wondered again, briefly, where she was finding the energy for it, but Glitch had transferred enough for him to keep up. He stood and followed her, watching her furious eyes glare at Megabyte. The face was Bob's, but the smile was most decidedly _not_. "Why don't you just stop pretending to be someone else?"

Megabyte smiled at her as Bob for a moment before his body morphed back into the more powerful viral form. "As you wish. We must all drop our pretenses eventually, my dear."

Her hand balled itself into a fist, then she turned sharply away from Megabyte to look at Bob. "Matrix should be done by now. I'm going to the war room to get those updates," she said. "You need to stay here until we can get our more experienced officers back online. Someone needs to monitor him."

"Wait, Dot... it's quiet right now. Let's keep talking." He grabbed her hand. "Look, we can disagree about Megabyte but I think there's things we need to get out in the open. There's nothing that has to be done this nano—"

"Are you kidding? There are a _million_ things to do. I need to start organizing how we're going to bring power back online, we need plans for repairing the system and the damage caused by those so-called scans—"

"It can wait," protested Bob. "You have a team. And you have an injury."

She pulled her hand away. "An injury that needs a diagnostic. The diagnostic that needs the system in semi-working order.I'm in shape enough to do some work. What do you want to do, sit around and talk all second? We don't have time."

"You always had time to talk to _me_ ," said Megabyte, letting his eyelids fall half-closed. Bob glared at him, while Dot shrank away uncomfortably. "I think you enjoyed my company more than you enjoyed Bob's, didn't you? It's why you chose _me_ instead of _him_ at our wedding, wasn't it?" Her cheeks went bright green and she took a step back. "Of course... I must say, you were entirely as content to avoid conversation after you agreed to wed."

Dot gasped, and both sprites stared at Megabyte in shock for a nano. Dot recovered first. Her breaths were quick, short and furious even as her face twisted into a look of loathing that putany of Megabyte's expressions to shame. "I _hate_ you," she hissed. She didn't look at Bob, but angled her head toward him. "I'll see you later, Bob," she said, and stormed out of the room.

He put out a hand and called her name, but it was too late. Megabyte looked at the door with a curious, bland expression as Bob turned and glared at him. If that virus understood a _fraction_ of what he'd put Dot through... "You are a bug in a rootkit," said Bob through his teeth.

"Compliments will get you everywhere..." The virus smiled, then changed his form. Dot's face stared out at him from inside the firewall, darkened by the red filter. "You know, _we_ could talk if you'd like. I could let you kiss me. It would make things more equal, wouldn't it?"

Bob scowled. "Equal? I don't think so. And you're not actually _Dot_ , so I don't have anything to say to you, Megabyte. Maybe we can talk after I cure you."

"Cure me. Hah. You don't know what it takes to change someone's nature, Guardian," came Dot's voice."Nor do you have what it takes to implement such a change." Bob and Megabyte stared at each other for a time, until the virus smiled at the the guardian. Slowly and methodically, he began to test the containment fields that the firewall provided, while Bob began, equally methodically, to catalogue his code.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope people liked that chapter (and that it wasn't too long)! Now, a real note-type-note: some of you may have seen that AO3 has stopped doing page hits for anyone who's not logged in due to the rise in traffic from the quarantine. I'm not sure how many people are reading this while logged off, but I'd really appreciate it if any logged off readers could give a comment, even just a "Kilroy was here!", so I know I'm not posting to the void! No pressure though! See you next week!


	4. Ask a viral question...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bob talks to Megabyte more than he talks to Dot.

Bob was finally finishing his analyses. He'd kept himself busy with the work, almost as busy as Dot, as a distraction from the fact that the woman just kept excusing herself whenever he came anywhere near her. Behind the firewall, intelligent and calculating eyes watched as the blue sprite made theoretical changes to areas of code on a console. "I've told you before: There is nothing wrong with a virus that acts as a virus, Guardian. You really think you can _cure_ who I am?"

"I won't know until I try." Bob looked at the readouts carefully, then nodded. "I think I've got it now. Won't be long, Megabyte. You'll be just like me. Well, no Guardian code, so maybe more like Dot." Bob frowned for a moment at the mention of her name. So much for a distraction.

"Like Ms Matrix." The virus smirked for a moment, then shook his head. "Breaking who someone is, Bob, is not such a simple task. Certainly not for a compassionate sprite like yourself." Megabyte sat down lazily on the chair Bob had sent into the firewall a few minutes back. "I suppose I should be grateful. If you _were_ Dot, you might be able to succeed. She's so much more... _focused_ than you."

Bob scowled at him for a moment, then opened a vid window to Phong. The old man looked like he'd aged another year, but he was still processing, no matter what Megabyte had done to him. "I've finished with my analysis, Phong. I think I know my next step." The golden sprite nodded seriously as Bob examined the power levels of his console. "Any chance I could get more power over here? I can't start reformatting until I have... oh, maybe double this amount."

Phong nodded seriously and began typing for a moment before he looked up. "Bob, my child... is it _wise_ to attempt this? Perhaps the system would be better served by deleting him."

Bob shook his head and sighed. "Not you, too. Dot's against it, Turbo's against it... All I've got are you, Enzo and Matrix. Come on, Phong, I thought you were on my side in this."

The old sprite sighed. "I said before that I will support you, Guardian." He typed a bit, checking on consumption. "The power for the containment is all that we can divert at the moment. Any further would re-damage the wiring on three other levels of the Principle Office. We cannot afford additional issues at this time."

"Okay," said Bob with real disappointment. "That's what I thought. Thanks, Phong."

He reached out to close the window. "Bob," came Phong's voice, interrupting his actions, "will we see you at the Diner?"

The Guardian looked back hesitantly and shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think I really feel like celebrating alone."

"If you come, I am certain..." He paused for a moment, then looked at something— or more likely, some _one_ — else in the command room. "You _will_ have company, should you seek it."

Company? Could Phong really have convinced Dot to leave the control room? Well... she wouldn't be able to claim she was too _busy_ to talk, at least. "I guess I'll be there, then," Bob nodded and the window closed. "Thank the User for meddling system admins..." he muttered with a small but fond smile that he held for half a micro before he looked over at the virus. "I guess the cure will have to wait until we get more of the system repairs done."

"Systems repairs. Yes, I suppose that must be keeping everyone very busy." Megabyte paused for a moment, his eyes glittering. "And yet, I wonder, where _is_ the lovely Dot Matrix? She hasn't come to visit us, and it's been minutes of this terrible boredom. I had hoped to see my beautiful bride again."

"Your bride? You—" Bob's eyes narrowed, incensed as he looked at the virus. "You spent the last half hour terrorizing her, threatening her family, and trying to delete her. You hurt her. You pushed her through a gateway you thought would fragment her. _Why_ would she come to see _you_?"

"Unlike _you_ and Ms Matrix, _we_ have things in common," came the reply. The dark blue eyelids lowered with a deceptive laziness. "Drive, ambition... It must be difficult for you, knowing how little you share with her. And how very unwilling she is to share with you."

Bob tried to keep his face neutral. Megabyte had been needling him with that for the entire time he'd been in there. "But you know her all her deepest secrets, isn't that right?"

"Certainly." Megabyte smiled and watched Bob's reaction. "Perhaps during your party to celebrate your... ahem, _victory_... you should ask her about them."

"Do I look like I need your help in picking conversation topics?"

Megabyte laughed. "You should ask her about her time with me." Bob shook his head and looked down at the console, checking on the containment status and power consumption levels. "No? I suppose it's better that way. I doubt she would trust you enough to answer."

Bob's hands stilled and he made a face at the console. Megabyte had a real _talent_ at finding weak spots. "She trusts me."

"Then you've spoken of her time during Megaframe?" Bob looked up sharply. "Ah, you haven't. Perhaps she would reminisce with me. We were, after all, quite... _close_."

Bob shook his head and smiled tightly. "Maybe she'll talk to you about it once I'm finished turning you into a sprite."

"I'd rather be deleted," came Megabyte's disgusted response.

"Too bad I care more about your registry entries than your file preferences." He rechecked the status of the firewalls and containment protocols for Megabyte and the few virals he'd managed to get back into his sphere of influence before handing the whole thing off to the system officers. Before he left, he gave the virus a last, pleasant smile. "I'm sure it won't take long before we get the power all the way back on. Stay..." He tapped the burning firewall and blew on his finger. " _...frosty_."

* * *

**THE HUNT IS OVER!**

The banners slung over the bar at the recently repaired Dot's Diner all declared it in bold caps. Throughout Mainframe, celebrations and parties had been raging for almost a minute. The command staff hadn't had a chance to join any of them, busy as they were with all the most essential repairs, until now. Power was still down throughout the system, but they'd managed to get temporary batteries to many areas, which allowed most of the city to be inhabited once again.

Phong had a smile on his face that equalled the one he'd worn when the system had been rebooted, and despite the very large patches to the old sprite's body, he was drinking cocoa and toasting the defenders of the system. It was rare to see him outside of the Principle Office, but Cecil had managed to set up Dot's Diner even without power. And when Phong had declared they all needed a minute away from the stress, well, the party had been born.

Little Enzo was trying to teach several of the system police binomes to dance, busting out some DDR moves while his father looked on. The suit had been a casualty of the hunt, of course, so the null was sitting on the bar of the diner, next to the energy shakes and the alcohol that had somehow been found for the event. Despite the loss of the suit, the null still had his Welman personality. Everyone was glad for that. Nibbles wasn't much of a help.

Mouse, who had managed to contact Ray at some point, was relaxing with a bubbling glass of apple cider while stroking the Baud with her feet. The pair was sitting in one of the booths, looking out at the semi-dark city. Anyone would have agreed that it was pretty like this: data flowed over the almost completely repaired highway in Baudway again, some of the only non-tear lighting in the city at the moment.

Even Matrix had something approximating a smile as he waved goodbye to everyone— he and AndrAIa were heading out. They'd had more than enough time partying with the group, and it looked like they wanted a little bit of privacy.

Bob couldn't blame them and he waved back at his friends as they left, trying to keep himself from feeling too jealous at the easy way the two showed their love for one another. 

Perhaps it was the drinking he'd done, but despite the jealousy, Bob did still feel mildly pleased with how things had turned out. Yes, he had been rebuffed earlier by Dot, who was sitting off in a corner, but he done his best to keep himself upbeat, telling stories of the web to anyone who wanted to hear them. He'd gathered a following of binomes for a while, and despite her insistence that she wanted to be alone, he'd seen Dot's eyes following him out of the corners of his own. He could see the outline of a smile when he told a funny story, the highlights of concern in her eyes when he told a more serious one... He knew she was listening.

She wanted to be with him still. She _had to_ want to talk. She was just being stubborn.

He excused himself from the group, grabbing his tumbler of V-table— Mainframe's best mid-alcoholic refreshment, brewed in one of the brightest corners of Baudway— Bob blinked at himself, wondering when he'd started to think like Mike, and placed himself in Cecil's way, stopping the server in his track. He held a glass of Obsolescence, an obscenely strong green hued drink, that Dot had been slowly sipping all evening. "I'll take that to her," Bob said with an easy smile.

Cecil looked at him skeptically, clearly looking through his functions to find the correct response, then shrugged. "I'm not sure if Madame will appreciate it," he said in warning, handing the drink to Bob.

"Thanks, Cecil."

"That's Cecil!"

Bob let his grin at the server widen momentarily, then headed over to Dot's table. It might have seemed as though he hadn't a care in the world as he sauntered over, but his nerves were burning through his smile almost more quickly than he could paint it on his face. By the time he got to the booth where she was sitting, all he seemed to feel was trepidation. Maybe he hadn't actually had enough yet... he knocked back the last of his drink.

Boy, it sure was _dark_ over here. He looked around. Either Cecil hadn't bothered to light this area with the temporary contrasters, or Dot had taken the time to blow them out. He could barely make out her face, even from this distance. Only her eyes showed well in the dim light that made it over to this corner, and they looked a bit... watery. He set the glass down in front of her on the table, put his own empty down nearby, and sat across from her.

"Hey," he said uncertainly.

"Hey." She pulled the drink over to herself. "I told you I want to be alone, Bob." Bob frowned and tried to think of what to say. Maybe he should have prepared a little bit more, but, like always, he'd come over thinking he could get by with intuition, and as often happened when Dot was involved, that was leaving him tongue-tied. She watched him for a moment, then reached out and took her drink, sipping it slowly, as she'd done the last one. He still hadn't said anything by the time she put it back down, so she sighed. "You looked like you were having fun at the party. One of us should. Why don't you just go back?"

He shook his head, though he wasn't quite confident that she could see much more than his outline. "I thought maybe I could convince you to join us. We beat Megabyte together, after all. As a team?" He paused, looking to see something in her face, some sort of reaction, but it was too dark. "Bob and Dot, Dot and Bob." She was still silent. A millisecond passed, and she'd said nothing, her eyes dropping to look at her drink instead of him. Maybe it was the alcohol, but the silence was killing him. "The Guardian and the Command.Com, defending the system—"

" _Stop_." It was pitched a bit louder than his own voice, but it was still quiet enough that he had to strain a little bit to hear her over some of the more agressive sounds of partying. "Bob, I..." He _could_ hear her deep breath, though. "I'm not going to do it any more."

"Sorry.... what?" He looked at her in confusion.

Dot sighed, and touched the table with a finger. She drew a circle with the condensation from her glass, then then two triangles that formed their icons. He couldn't see it well, but the edges sparkled slightly red in the dim light. "Command.Com. I'm giving it up." Bob looked at her in confusion. It was part of her function. She couldn't give it up any more than he could give up being a Guardian. There must have been more light hitting him than her, because she sensed his need for an explanation without him saying a word. "I'm not fit to be in the Principle Office. I damaged the _Core_... not to mention how much damage I did to the rest of the system..."

Bob rolled his eyes. "Dot, the only person who's at fault is Megabyte." Dot shook her head, and Bob motioned behind him. "Come on, does it look like anyone here blames you? Do you think Phong wants you to resign? Or me, or Matrix, or AndrAIa?" She shrugged. "I'm the one who pulled the wires that damaged the DMA, should I resign?"

"That's _different_."

"No, it's not."

Dot's only reply was to take another sip of the Obsolescence.

"Dot, we all love you." She let out a short, sharp puff of disbelief and downed the rest of it, then signaled Cecil. Bob reached out to take one of her hands, but she pulled them both back and out of sight. Not encouraging, but, " _I_ love you," he declared, undaunted.

"You _shouldn't_ ," she replied, as Cecil put another drink in front of her. Her hands stole back up from under the table and she drank it down quickly. "Cecil, just bring me the bottle."

The server paused, looking at her for a moment as if evaluating, then shrugged. "As you wish, Madame," he said, then headed off.

Bob said nothing, trying to parse the discussion tree ahead of him, wondering if maybe this conversation should be postponed until they'd both had some time to process the alcoholic substances. Then again, if she was intending on quitting tomorrow, she'd be distinctly hard to track down, especially with the power outages throughout the city. No, no, he couldn't just drop it like some old database table, this was important. He just had to figure out the right approach... By the time Cecil arrived back with the bottle and Dot had poured herself another glass, he still hadn't figured out what to say. Once again, Dot took the initiative, as though she'd been planning the conversation in her own head for a while.

"I betrayed you," she said, her voice filled with self-recrimination. "I chose a virus over a Guardian. What kind of person does that?" His shoulders sank. He hurt for her, he really did. He hurt for himself, too, of course, but she'd always taken the weight of the net on her shoulders, where the Academy had taught _him_ to place it where it belonged: on the virus... He reached out for her, but once again she pulled away. "I'll tell you what kind, Bob: the kind who _deserves_ a virus."

"Dot... That's not fair. And it's not true."

The green sprite raised a hand dismissively. "You couldn't fragment me even to save the system. But me? I was basically doing that to you for an _hour_ with Daemon!"

" _I_ made that decision when I didn't tell you. I knew you wouldn't have let me—"

"The kind of person who can sacrifice her friends and family to defeat a virus deserves one," she continued, her voice rising a bit higher, enough to carry over to Phong, though if anyone else heard her, they were hiding it. The old sprite looked over in concern. "Send Enzo into a game? Why not? Use you as live bait? Let's do it. Marry Megabyte? Hey, he seems like a good enough sprite. Take down power for three quarters of the system, not to _mention_ the damage inside the Principle Office? Well, as long I win! That's me, that's Dot Matrix! You're all just chess pieces to me, and if I need to play a sacrifice, it's fine, and it doesn't _mean_ anything." She emptied her glass again. "Just so long as there's a _plan_ , some DRM'd strategy that I think will work— You should have fragmented me when you had the chance, only you would never do something like that, because you're _better_ than me."

Bob stood up and sat down beside her, pulling the bottle out of her reach before she could pour another. "That's _ridiculous_. That's got to be the most _random_ thing you've ever said—" he stalled out as he looked at her. Now that he wasn't obstructing the light, he could see her face a bit better. There were specular tracks running down her cheeks. "You've been crying," he said and tried to reach out to her.

She looked away and wiped her face as Phong rolled over. "Bob. Dot. Are you well, my children?"

Dot took a deep breath. "We're _fine_ , Phong. I'm sorry, I'm just a little tired, and I didn't come here to talk."

"Hey—"

"Please, both of you, enjoy the rest of the party. I'm going to go home."

She looked at Bob expectantly. He was between her and the exit. Well, he wasn't going to let her get away without talking to him. He'd just have to insist. "I'll walk with you," said Bob. He stood then took her hand before she could pull it away again. She looked at their hands for a nano before she shook her head and took a breath and let him help her to stand. She swayed a little on her feet— well, Bob _thought_ it was her doing the swaying.

Phong looked at them critically for a moment, then focused his attention on Dot. "My child, you must speak to someone." Dot shook her head. "You _must_. You refuse to speak to me, you refuse to speak to Mouse, now you refuse to speak to Bob. With whom will you speak?"

"I won't. I _can't_." The old man's neck extended and his blank eyes looked sternly into Dot's, but the green sprite simply shook her head. "I'll solve my problems _my way_ , Phong. I've made my decision, and it's on your desk."

"I saw it," said the old sprite. "The system does not _accept_ your resignation, child."

Bob looked between the two, watching the immovable object meeting the unstoppable force. This must have been compiling for a while. Defusing the situation was called for. "Dot, look, if you need some... _time off_ from helping run the system, that's okay. You're not in a state for decisions right now."

She turned to Bob, fury on her face. "How _dare_ you tell me what state I'm in! You don't know anything about it!"

His eyes narrowed and he nodded at the bottle on the table, her anger triggering his. He was just trying to protect her from herself. "Everyone looking can see what state you're in, Dot," he said, voice loud in a sudden silence that neither of them had noticed. She opened her mouth, while he squared his shoulders uncomfortably. "Are you sure you want to do this in front of them?" he asked in a seething whisper, a challenging look in his eyes.

She paused, looked around at the way the entire party had stopped, then deflated suddenly. "I just want to go home," she said with a shake of her head.

Bob nodded and took Dot's hand. There was no way she was going anywhere alone. The anger wasn't exactly gone, but he gave everyone a big smile. "Don't stop the party on our account! We'll see everyone next cycle, bright and early!"

"Not too early!" said Welman Matrix.

The Diner filled with chatter abruptly, and Phong turned his extended head to look at Bob. "Speak with her," said the old man. Bob raised an eyebrow and shrugged in reply, and the golden sprite sighed. His neck shortened until he could take another sip of his cocoa, then he moved away from the couple.

Dot grabbed the bottle despite Bob's disapproving frown. He put a hand on her back and led them out through the back of the Diner, Dot taking the lead at some point to get them through the nearly black kitchen area and out into the darkness of Mainframe's night cycle. The city was an unusual sight without lights. Looking up, one could almost see the true forms of all the circuits in the sky as tiny specks of light moved back and forth over them.

Dot seemed to be staring at the destruction rather than the stars. There was a lot of it, this having been one of the sections of the city hardest hit by the bright-light scanning. He pulled her a little closer, linked his arm with hers. They each stumbled a little, her a bit more than him, and they walked in silence for a while, until Dot stopped at a tear, staring at it.

The reflection of it flickered in her eyes, and she raised her bottle to her lips, taking a generous mouthful, then offered it to Bob. The Guardian took it, more to keep it from her than anything, but sighed as he saw the tears accumulating in her eyes. Well. He hadn't really expected to do this tonight, but he let go of her and raised his arm. "Glitch, mend." The golden light from the keytool raced out, encircling the tear, reducing it's size and complexity and class until it blinked out of existence over the course of a nano.

Dot stared at where the tear had been, and Bob looked at her for a while. She was swaying ever so slightly, and her eyes were dull in the dim light once she wiped the tears away. "Dot... Damage can be fixed," he said finally. "Don't give up on the system." _Don't give up on_ us _._

She raised a hand to her forehead. "Give up? Look around, Bob. This is my fault, just like before, only we don't get a restart this time." Bob shook his head and her face bunched itself up in frustration. "Look around!" she demanded. "You can't deny that the system's in as bad condition as when the Saucy Mare brought all of you back. This is what leaving me in charge of things gets us: a system with half its circuits blown."

"No," replied Bob, annoyance coloring his voice. "This is what a virus in the principle office gets us. Are you really going to take responsibility for everything?"

Dot turned to look at him. "Why shouldn't I? I was in charge. Anything that happened was my fault, then and now."

"You can't—" He paused and closed his eyes. "I should know what I'm supposed to blame you for. What happened _then_?"

"I'm not talking about it."

"You don't trust me?" he asked. She shook her head, dismissive of the reasoning. "Megabyte said you wouldn't tell me because you don't trust me."

"You're listening to what _he_ says?"

"At least he talks to me," said Bob.

She let out a huff of air and looked at him in disbelief. "What is _wrong_ with you? That virus was going to— never mind." She shook her head and started walking away, following the path of the burn marks on the circuitry.

He shook his head in frustration. Talking to her was like playing Minesweeper. "Dot?" She ignored him, putting one foot in front of the other, or at least something approximating it. "Come on, Dot." He followed after her, catching up easily. When he tried to take her hand, she pulled away sharply, teetering precariously for a moment before she caught herself. "Look, whatever I've done, I'm _sorry_ , okay?"

They walked in silence for a bit, Dot's feet weaving just a little bit as she moved, Bob still holding the half-full bottle of Obsolescence in one hand. She seemed to turn her attention to each of the darkened buildings in turn. "No," she said eventually, her voice quiet and cracking. " _I_ am."

What was he supposed to say to _that_?

The Principle Office loomed ahead of them. Dot had taken up temporary residence: with so much of the city requiring repairs, she'd wanted to be closer to the action. The damage on the outside of the building seemed mild, but both knew that the appearance was deceiving. The giant hole in the side, repairs reprioritized due to the state of the city at large, wasn't particularly visible from this position, but it was still up there and open to the outside.

Bob glanced sideways at Dot. She was looking at that grand building, seemingly deep in thought. "Cookie for your thoughts?"

She looked at him and gave a sigh. "You know, I never said thank you. For showing up when you did." She gave a small, bitter sounding laugh. "It was the last thing I wanted, but... if you hadn't... if he hadn't been exposed..." She shook her head. "I guess I should be thanking _Glitch_ , really."

The keytool spun around and clicked a few times and Bob smiled warmly. "Glitch says you're welcome." Bob didn't want to imagine what would have happened if Megabyte had married her. The things he'd said after the hunt, the way he still called her his bride sometimes... it scared Bob a lot more than he wanted to admit.

"Look, Dot," he said as they started across the bridge. "I'm... sorry I didn't recognize he wasn't me. I mean, I didn't want you to marry him, but I still thought he was some version of me, and I, well, I wanted you to be happy with the version of me who came back, not the version of me who left, but I didn't want to destroy your happiness. I never wanted that." He watched guiltily as she winced. Word Perfect he was _not_. He sounded like Enzo after a jetball game, overclocked and underprocessing. He supposed it had something to do with his on-the-fly attitude but... Why couldn't he be smooth? Megabyte had been so smooth he was antialiased, even while sounding exactly like _him_. No wonder she'd gravitated to the virus.

Bob shook his head to clear it of the thought. "It's just that I'm _more_ than that old me would have been, you know. Seen more, done more. Things happened out in the Web, some that I'm proud of, some that I'm not. I know you were listening."

She took a deep breath and looked up at the sky as they reached the other side of the bridge. "Sometimes," she said softly, "I think I'm _less_ than the old me, from before that siege with Megabyte. I used to build things from the ground up, but now..." She turned her gaze to at the Principle Office. "This is what I do now. _Destruction_." She shook her head in disgust.

"You can't blame yourself for what Megabyte did."

" _Megabyte_?" Dot shook her head and looked at the guardian. "Bob... I authorized installation of a keytool suppression field. I couldn't get it offline, and you had no choice but to interrupt DMA transfers that were important for the whole system. I authorized that scanner without a full understanding of it because someone I _thought_ was you told me it was okay. And then I couldn't turn it off via command line, so I threw my zipboard at one of the lines to the core to make it explode. In the _Core_ , Bob. I sent AndrAIa to disrupt critical system functions. I just watched as he destroyed Hack and Slash, and we still haven't found all the pieces. Everything he said then—"

Bob scowled. Everything _he'd_ said?

She shook her head, disgust in every line of her features. "And that's not even counting how I betrayed you, how I almost destroyed _you_ , the sprite I claimed to love and trust above all others, the sprite I asked to marry me, and you were encased in some hard shell and _I_ was—" She covered her face with her hands and let out a sobbing breath.

"Dot," he reached out to her, and she pushed his hand away. "Megabyte—"

Her face hardened into anger. "Megabyte gave me opportunities to fail myself," she said, "but I'm the one who took them. So just leave me alone, Bob."

* * *

"Back so soon, Guardian?" Bob sat on the floor near the edge of the firewall, far from the CPU officers, putting the confiscated green bottle down beside him. Megabyte glanced at it and smiled. "I take it the lovely Ms Matrix didn't trust you enough to speak with you."

"No." Bob tapped his fingers on his leg for a moment and glared at the virus. _Megabyte_. Everything came down to that trojan horse in his custody."What did you say to her?" Megabyte raised an eyebrow. "When you destroyed Hack and Slash. What did you say to her?"

"Have you asked her?" Bob leaned back against the wall and didn't answer. "Ah. I suppose that's the reason for the bottle." The guardian glanced at it, his mouth forming into a line. He didn't want to tell Megabyte anything, but whether it was Megabyte's new-found acting skills or an older ability to read the sprite in front of him, the virus saw right through him. "No?" Megabyte tilted his head. "Was it _her_ drink? Oh, my dear Bob, it looks nearly half-empty. Whatever will you do?"

Bob's clenched his hand into a fist. " _What_ did you say to her?"

Megabyte sighed contentedly as he looked at the sprite, taking in the anger as nourishment for his soul— if he even had one. "I could do with a drink."

The guardian closed his eyes for a moment, then grabbed the bottle and stood. "Glitch, unbreakable container." He poured into the glass that Glitch provided and placed the drink in one of the double-firewalled hatches they'd installed to allow the virus to take in enough energy to survive.

The virus smiled and took the glass. "Oh, Bob, it would hardly do to drink alone. You will join me, won't you?" Bob's muscles tensed for a moment, but he took a deep breath and looked at the bottle with a scowl. "A toast." Megabyte raised his glass. "To Dot Matrix."

The guardian's head fell in defeat for a moment and he sighed. "To Dot Matrix," agreed Bob, putting the bottle to his lips and letting the liquor slide down his throat. It only burned a little. "Now tell me what you said to her."

"Word for word? I don't think you've enough in that bottle to get you through it. But I can give you the highlights. For one thing, I reminded her of all the time that she and I spent together, Bob. So much... hm, _quality_ time."

"Quality time?"

"Kisses. Caresses. That sort of thing." Megabyte watched carefully as Bob grimaced. "How she enjoyed my hair— _your_ hair, really— tickling her ears when I held her close. Shall I go on?"Bob shook his head and eyed the bottle. "How she enjoyed my hands on her skin. How she enjoyed hers tangling in my hair..."

Megabyte smiled languorously. Bob looked at the virus with disgust, then his eyes turned inward for a moment. He took a drink out of the bottle, steeling himself for a new question as his own thoughts assailed him. "Did you rape her?" His voice was quiet, almost dangerous, a tone that was barely his own.

Megabyte just laughed. "No, guardian. Keep your mind out of the trash bin. Ms Matrix was very much against that before the wedding." Bob nodded slowly and he looked away. "Although, if I knew we'd be having this conversation now, perhaps I'd have pushed the issue." Bob's shocked eyes snapped up to Megabyte's smile, and he took a step back.

Megabyte raised his glass and sipped again.

Bob took another drink out of the bottle, then rubbed his head. He stood quietly for a while, calming himself down, then looked up at Megabyte. "What else did you say?"

Megabyte took a sip of his drink and smiled. "I spoke about _you_. I told her you'd never understand her... and if you ever _did_ understand her, why _then_ , you wouldn't love her."

"She wouldn't believe that."

Megabyte nodded sagely. "You say that because you do not understand her. She believed every word of what I said. She may have denied it to you—" Bob looked away for a moment. "Ah. She hasn't quite denied it, has she..."

Bob shook his head. "Why would she believe that...?"

The virus looked at the bottle once more, noting that it had a little less than a quarter left. "Has she told you what happened in Megaframe?"

Bob grimaced. "She doesn't wanna talk about it," he said quietly, leaning against the wall. Megabyte watched him carefully. The guardian didn't stumble, his movement was as precise as ever... the viral eyes narrowed slightly, just for a moment, before his blandly bored expression returned to Megabyte's face.

"No, no, I suppose she wouldn't. What happens in Megaframe stays in Megaframe, I suppose. Of course, I _could_ tell you, but..." Bob took another swallow of alcohol. "I'm sure you'd rather hear it from her."

Bob shrugged. "She _refuses_ to talk about it. It's you or nothing, so go ahead."

"That's not entirely true, Guardian," said the virus, sounding for all the world like he was being forthcoming for Bob's own benefit. "What if I told you that there was a way for you to hear about Megaframe in Dot's own words?"

"I'd say your pants are on fire." He sniffed. "Except you don't really wear pants, and armor probably doesn't catch on fire."

"I saw the record of it on her organizer. I even watched a few of the entries. It was _fascinating_ to hear about my rule from the perspective of one of my subjects." Bob looked at Megabyte uncertainly, and the virus smiled. "I suppose _she_ didn't see it that way, of course."

Bob sighed and shook his head. "I can't just look at her organizer. It's password protected. And it's... it's not right."

Megabyte shrugged. "Well, that's your choice. Of course... I did spend some time as you, Bob. And when I was you, I'd have done anything to safeguard my dearest love. It would be for her own good, after all."

Bob frowned. "How's that s'posed to work?"

"She's been... _unstable_ , hasn't she?" Megabyte paused to tent his fingers, then smiled at the guardian. He waited for the sprite's brow to furrow before he continued. "Of course she has— even before the hunt, all of her friends were worried she was about to go into a game and lose without the questionably stabilizing influence of her _beloved Bob_." The virus smiled.

"Bet you had a hand in making everyone think that," Bob muttered, lifting the bottle once more, then placing it down beside him as he realized it was empty.

Megabyte took another sip. "Her behavior has been erratic," he said. "Now, you have the opportunity to discover why. Once you know what the problem is, you'll surely be able to fix things between you. Knowledge is p— part of what you need in order to mend any tear, wouldn't you agree, Guardian?"

Bob frowned, seemingly looking inwards for a moment, then he nodded slowly. "I'm not doing this because you told me to," he said warningly.

"I wouldn't dream of thinking such a thing."

"It's for her benefit. To keep her safe from you."

Megabyte smiled. "Oh, Bob? You'll need a password. Try 'Megabyte.'" Bob looked at the virus suspiciously for a moment before leaving, waving at the security officers on his way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit thank you to everyone who's logged on while reading :)


	5. Hidden Files

Bob closed the door behind him and approached Dot's desk with trepidation. Was he really going to do this? If Megabyte was telling the truth, he was about to look through some of Dot's most private thoughts. Like going through her diary...

There it was, sitting unattended, like she had nothing left to organize. He picked it up, turned it around a few times in his hands. Why had she left it there? Did it matter? If she hadn't brought it back to her room, maybe she wouldn't care if he looked at it. Right?

He frowned at himself. Was it wrong to look at these files? _For her own good_ sounded fine in theory, but this was real life, and she hadn't invited him to look at them. And Megabyte certainly had his own purposes. What was the virus playing at, anyways?

He sat down on the couch and stared at the device. It certainly wouldn't hurt to look at just _one_ of these entries. Maybe he could look at one, and then he'd see that his nemesis was lying through his teeth. Yes, that would surely be okay. A single entry...

He turned the organizer on and typed in the password, despite his misgivings. MEGABYTE. Why would she have chosen _that_? He'd never have thought... and why had the _virus_ known it, for that matter? But regardless, the password worked. He was in. In fact, he was directed immediately to a set of files and folders, all timestamped during the time he was gone. From what little Matrix had been able to recall to Bob, it was from after the cadet had been lost, too. He took a breath, then clicked on it.

_Dot's face appeared on the screen, looking tired and resigned, but also quite clearly in professional mode. "Minute Zero," she said._

_"The last few hours have been disastrous for Mainframe, and while I plan to turn it around, there needs to be a record of what's gone on. Except for the start of this one, I'm putting the entries on a 3-day timelock, encryption provided by Mouse, our... resident hacker? Hm. I guess that's what she's become." She shook her head. "That should make the data stale if any of the enemy accesses it... She's encoding it for immediate access to system level personel and verfied Guardian codecs. I'm hoping that means_ our _Guardian. Guardians." Her eyes went distant, and then she blinked._

_"So, first, a brief recap, in case whoever is watching this isn't from here. Mainframe was a binary system until an accident happened which took out the second city. That accident opened the system to the net, and eventually allowed two viruses entry: Megabyte, a class 3 armored control virus, and Hexadecimal, a class 4 polymorphic chaotic. We were a small, isolated system, and the Guardians, who we also met during the accident, saw fit to send us someone to help us deal with the infection. Guardian 452, known as—" A hitch in her voice was just barely audible. "Bob."_

Even through the screen, he could feel the pain that she was trying to hide. His fingers brushed the screen as he watched her try to keep herself pulled together.

_She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and then continued on. "This worked for two and a half days, until a Webcreature arrived. It corrupted the viruses, and the Guardians saw fit to attempt a deletion of our entire system. That failed, but opened a portal to the web. In order to close that portal, the Guardian and the Command.Com—_ me _— convinced the systems administrator to follow a plan where viruses and Mainframers would work together to close the portal and end the threat._

_"The plan was semi-successful. The system was closed. In the fighting, the Guardian who was assigned to work with us was sent out into the web by Megabyte. Five minutes later, we're still waiting for him to make his way back._

_"We..." Her face fell for a moment, and the recording itself hitched, her face moving to a slightly different position before it continued on."We also had a Guardian cadet who was instrumental in keeping Megabyte at bay for three minutes, but... he was inexperienced and lost a game. We weren't able to find the... the nulls—" She took a deep breath, and once again, the recording hitched, as if she'd paused it._

Bob winced and wished he'd been there. Enzo's loss had clearly still been raw in her heart. If he'd been there, she'd never have lost her brother in the first place. He'd made so many mistakes... Still, once her professional face had reappeared, establishing that the recording had started, she began speaking without much ado.

_"One hour after we had lost our original Guardian, we set up a firewall around the area where both viruses were holed up. Four and a half seconds ago, there was some sort of explosion and the firewall went down. And that brings us to now. The Minute Zero sitrep, for anyone who might be able to see this in the future._

_"Begin encryption." She leaned in and pressed a few buttons, and the video paused._

"Authorization... verified Guardian codecs." He shifted uneasily, but nodded to himself. At least this made this whole exercise seem a little more justified: she'd always intended him to see it, hadn't she? And now he was just doing what she'd always planned he'd do. That had to make things okay. "Glitch, could you transfer?" He looked at his keytool, which beeped and clicked for a moment.

The screen showed 'access granted.' Bob reached out to start the stream back up. "You're alone. How disappointing," came Bob's own voice, interrupting the guardian. His eyes widened: there was only one explanation!

"Megabyte!" Bob stood and rushed the virus, only to find himself hitting the wall while the virus behind him laughed. "What the—" He turned and stared at the form that little Enzo had dubbed Megabob during a few discussions, and his mind spun rapidly from conclusion to conclusion. "Glitch, scan."

"You needn't," said Megabyte, returning to his more intimidating viral form. "I'm a simulation in the encrypted area of her organizer." Bob's eyes narrowed. "You look well, Guardian." He looked around. "Where is my dearest Mrs Matrix? I do hope our wedding night went well."

Bob's eyes went wide with rage. "You worm ridden null forker... I am going to erase that organizer, and you with it. Glitch—"

"Now, Guardian, if you delete me, you'll never see the rest of the entries. Surely that was the reason you came here..." Bob clenched his hands into fists. "I suppose you could still ask the real me about it, if I'm not deleted." Bob was quiet, his eyes looking inward for a moment, and the viral image smiled. "You're considering it. Interesting."

Bob looked up. "You— I stopped the wedding," said Bob. "Your _wedding night_ didn't happen."

"Pity."

Bob took a deep breath and grit his teeth. "Why are you here?" he asked.

The virus turned to look at Bob. "Why are any of us here, Bob?" he asked mildly. Bob's eyes narrowed. The Megabyte simulation morphed himself into Megabob."I had intended to give this to you one day, after our dear _Mrs_ Matrix had no further need of it. Hopefully as _us_. I would have had you... 'help' us to open the files, then left while you were distracted. Locked you in some room somewhere, and let you watch all of this with _me_ as your company. You'd have figured it out eventually, but by then," Megabob smiled for a moment before turning back into Megabyte. "It would have been too late."

Bob looked at the simulation with distaste.

"Well, in any case, you might appreciate some company, Guardian. Someone to discuss all this with... Resume play."

_"Megabyte took control of the Principle Office. He also has Phong, the systems administrator; we aren't sure if he's taken him as a hostage or if he plans to delete him... I'm actively working on ways to get more information about that. Phong will never willingly work with Megabyte against the system, but he's the only one with sudo access, and without him, it's unlikely that we'll be able to retake the system._

_"Our current resources are low. We've taken one of my warehouses as a base for the remaining command staff, but we're going to have to change locations soon; Megabyte will find us too easily here, and destroying whatever resistance remains would be my next move if I were him... I expect it will take him some time to consolidate his power, so the move is high priority but not a blocking issue at this time._

_"We have 32 CPU cars available, out of a standard complement of 2048. We were not able to commandeer much of our hardware, which means our weaponry is low, but several of the techies are here, and between them and Mouse, I think we should be able to build what we need for defense. A notable hardware loss is Mouse's Ship, which is unfortunate; without it, we can't capture tears and redirect them."_

_Dot paused in the recording for a moment, then raised a hand and counted on her fingers. "Mouse, the hacker. Specky, the lead tech. Me, Command.Com. That's the crew for now. We took heavy losses during Megabyte's last attack. So far, we've had 64 binome security forces arrive, and we're trying to contact stragglers that might not have been in the principle office when Megabyte took it._

_"More updates tomorrow."_

There was a brief pause, then,

_"Minute One."_

"Pause playback." He backed out to the file folder and checked on the number of entries. "448. There should be more here if she was doing minute by minute updates." He looked at the virus for a moment. "I take it you've already listened to all of them."

"Oh, I have. Most of them are simple status reports. Binomes, statements of resources, that sort of thing. But there are some that are very amusing, Bob."

"Amusing," Bob repeated, his face hardening. He did not feel particularly _amused_. "You know, I could get someone to remove you. Mouse. Phong."

"You have both of them still?" Megabyte frowned for a moment. "Well." He shrugged philosophically. "I suppose you _could_ ask them to do that, but then... You're alone here, so I wonder, Bob: does Ms Matrix know you're here? I suppose letting _them_ know will let _her_ know, and then she'll want an audit of her organizer and... Who knows what nasty surprises poor Ms Matrix will find?"

A sudden rage filled him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Poor, unstable Dot. Will you kiss her better, Bob?" Punching a simulation wouldn't make it go away. Bob knew that. Still, he did it, reached out and punched the image in front of him until it fragmented and reformed behind him, and if it didn't get rid of Megabyte, at least it satisfied some of Bob's frustration.

"You did something to her." Megabyte stood there, smiling but saying nothing. "What did you do?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." It was his own tone, his own speech pattern, his own voice coming from Megabyte's giant jaw. It was infuriating.

He grit his teeth. "I'll figure it out myself. There's 448 entries. If she started this after you took over the Principle Office and ended it just before the restart, that should have been..." Bob paused to do a little mental arithmetic, holding his fingers up in front of his face. "Carry the one... over a thousand minutes, give or take... The action should be in the places where she was too distracted to put together a report every minute. If I organize them by date, then... Hah."

_"Minute Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen. I approved the new location on minute eleven, and we moved in during minute twelve. There were some issues with getting here under cover, but we were able to use the system's sleep cycle to avoid most of the patrols. The move was done just in time; the warehouse we were occupying was under heavy fire today._

_"Current system resources unchanged. The list from the techs is just getting longer, and now that we've got our immediate location issues solved, I'm going to start working on getting those requests fulfilled. I should be able to use my former business partners. Many of them haven't been too affected by the new 'Megaframe' order of things._

_"A game came down in Kit's. With things the way they are now, neither Mouse nor I were able to get to the game. If I had access to the archives, I could have the CPUs watch Bob's old courses, but I've still got some of the readme files that he made on my organizer, so that might help._

_"I've had an intel report that says Megabyte raided Bob's apartment. I hope his people didn't damage the car..." She smiled sadly, for a moment, then shook her head. "I'm told they carried a bunch of files out. I'm not sure what Bob kept there, but hopefully nothing that's too useful to Megabyte. I suppose if any of it was, we'll find out soon enough."_

"Pause. It was _highly_ useful, all things considered."

Bob made a face of distaste and glanced over. "I'll bet. So what did you enjoy more? Beginner Game Theory or Advanced Antiviral Tactics?"

"Useful, but... no, Bob. What I enjoyed most was your graduate paper. What was the title? Techniques for Viral Decomposition and Reconstruction, wasn't it?"

" _Theoretical_ Techniques," Bob corrected. He frowned and his eyebrows drew together in confusion. "You enjoyed my paper? But you said it was a fate worse than deletion. The real you, I mean..."

Megabyte moved closer to the Guardian, a smile on his face. "It is, but it was also... _admirable_. Enjoyable. I mean, really, Bob, you came up with a truly novel form of infection, one that only a _sprite_ could imagine."

"No. The paper's not about—" Bob frowned. "It's about curing viruses, not infecting anyone."

"The parallels are quite fascinating. Your _cure_ for a virus is, in its way, a form of infecting viral code with sprite code. A true reverse engineering of the process. Let's play the next entry, hm?"

_"—atrix, I am pleased to see that you're still processing." The angle was off, as though the recording had been started in the middle of some other task. Dot was seen from below; Megabyte was not visible, though the bottom corner of a vid-window was._

_"Oh, really? Stuff it. What do you want."_

_"I want to give you and your little band of resistance fighters a chance to surrender. Really, Ms Matrix, you've already lost_ so _much. Bob, Enzo, Phong. Don't you think it's time to cut your losses? Surrender now, and your little group will be unharmed."_

_"Oh, right, you just want what's best for the system. That's why you threw Bob into the Web."_

_"I admit, I might have been... hasty."_

_"Can't get to the Supercomputer without him?" There was a pause while Dot glowered._

_"Ms Matrix, I am willing to be reasonable with you for now. Will you work against me when the system itself is at risk? The games will not abate because your Guardians are deleted, the system will not reorganize itself as efficiently, and a protracted war between us can only cause damage to Megaframe." She made an indignant noise at the back of her throat that Megabyte ignored. "If you were to join me, however, you and Mouse would find purpose within my organization, and you would be able to continue with your primary function."_

_"Let me think about that... no! Do you really think I'd work for you?"_

_"Why ever not? You worked for me before." She huffed and shook her head in disbelief. "I suppose you didn't see it from the same perspective. Well. If you won't work for me, be aware that I have no alternative but to crush you and your group."_

_"You can try."_

_"Hm... Misplaced confidence? Obstinance? I will have to break you of those errors in your processing, Ms Matrix. When you are ready to surrender, all you need do is call me. Farewell."_

_The corner of the vid window disappeared from the frame buffer, and Dot picked up the recorder, setting it to a more normal angle. "Minute Thirteen. I've negotiated with Mr Appleby for a steady supply of energy, and assigned 16 CPU binomes to escort it during the nightly cycle. We've had some additional interest from binomes—"_

"Pause." Bob stared at her for a moment. She seemed shaken, though anyone who didn't know her as well as he did probably wouldn't have caught the subtle way her blink response was off normal, or how her lips were pursed just slightly more than normal. He took a deep breath and looked at Megabyte, the trojan simulation watching with an expression of feigned interest, and wondered how well this Megabyte knew her. "No snide comment?"

"I wouldn't want you to get too comfortable."

Bob looked at his doppelganger skeptically for a moment, then at the entries again. "Right, so the next gap in entries..."

"You should try this one," said Megabyte, pointing at one that was well within the set of concurrent dates.

"Why that one?" The Guardian scrolled to it regardless, and Megabyte said nothing in reply. "Fine, be that way. Play."

_"Minute three hundred, thirty seven." Her right eye was blackened, there were small cuts on her cheeks and arms, parts of her outfit were damaged. She looked tired, frustrated, and as she rubbed her forehead, it was obvious there were fluids under her nails. "Major defeat against Megabyte. We lost nearly 64 CPU binomes to his infection._

_"Mouse and I were attempting to get through the blockade around G-Prime when_ he _showed up. I don't know how he knew we were going to be there. Maybe he_ didn't _know we were going to be there, maybe it was all just a coincidence. The outcome was the same. The instant he showed up, Hack and Slash got between me and him, but he went straight for Mouse instead. He knocked her sword away, and... I thought he was going to infect her, I really did. I know he can't, but I just... for a millisecond, I worried that..._

_"He offered surrender or deletion. We attacked. I managed to get her sword back to her, and she stabbed him, which made him let her go." Dot gestured at herself. "I got hit by one of his claws, though not enough to delete me. The strange thing was that it felt like... like he was holding back. Like he didn't_ want _to delete any of us. I don't know what that means. If it means anything."_

_She shook her head, sighed and leaned back in her chair all at once. "The binomes that were lost gave us cover for a retreat, amidst the gunfire and compression waves they were sending at us. It looks like we won't be able to get the optical components that Specky wanted, but at least we were able to patch up everyone who returned._

_"I'm half considering trying some of Bob's techniques, only... I don't think Hex would be as happy to see me as she was to see him... Ah, it wouldn't work... I shouldn't be rubber ducking on the reports..." She ran a hand through her hair. "I wish Phong were here. I'm sure he'd have some idea of what do do next..._

_"Including those in training, we have 342 binomes on our side. Current intel suggests he has 2048 infected, and I_ still _don't have a way to fix that without the Principle Office. Supply of wiring is running low again, so I'm scheduling a trip to Old Man Pearson's. Still haven't found a diagnosticprogram willing to join the staff after the loss of Dr Therac's clinic, which is necessitating costly runs to Beverly Hills."_

_She put her head in her hands. "I'm just at the end of my file today... I don't know how much longer we can hold out. End of report."_

Bob pushed a button to pause it without speaking. He stared at the still image, at Dot's injured features, while a number of questions filtered through his brain. Which one to ask? He glanced at Megabyte who was looking at Dot's image with a fond looking smile on his face, and found his anger again. "You find that _amusing_?"

"No." He walked forward, putting one of his fake hands right through the recorded image, made a fist, and traced down the damage. "Inflicting the damage is always more amusing than the aftermath." He looked at Bob expectantly. "Don't you agree? Whatever vengeance you took on me is surely more enjoyable than watching these..." Megabyte waved his hand at the image. "These pathetic little reminders of how completely you failed her."

"I didn't fail her."

"No? Then tell me, Bob: why did she not choose you?" Bob frowned and crossed his arms. "I think it's because she knew, deep down, that you could never keep her safe. She blames you for leaving. She blames you for taking so long to return. She blames you for being _infected_ by _Daemon_." The virus looked at Bob with annoyance. "As do I, Guardian. If you were to be infected, it should have been by me."

"Class Three," said Bob with a smug smile. "No matter how much you control, you can't infect anything more complicated than a numeral."

Megabyte scowled in response, but barely a nanosecond had passed before he smiled. "No, I suppose I can't. _Unless_..."

Bob looked at his mirror image with a slightly confused look, then glanced up at the recording and shook his head. "Unless _what_?"

Megabyte smiled and shrugged in a careless, casual way that Bob hadn't been able to do since his return from the web. "I'd suggest you look at minutes 425 and 557 next."

The Guardian started scrolling to those minutes. "That's a really long delay between reports," he remarked. "Did you delete some of her entries? If you stole her organizer, I'm sure she'd have moved software and firmware to get it back..."

_"Minute 425. Resources are 465 CPUs. Intel suggests that Megabyte has suffered some losses, and he's down to 1024 active, infected viral binomes. It's time to put Operation Favorite Game into service." She smiled. "We've taken some losses, but it's past time for us to get a win. My intel suggest Phong is being held in one of the quarantine rooms in the Principle Office._

_"It's a dangerous mission, but it needs to be done. Mouse and most of our binomes are going to be acting as a distraction in Floating Point. Megabyte's almost finished building that ABC factory in nullified sector KN4... they're going to take it down. Two in one, if we're lucky, but they can't get it done, they'll pull back._

_"I'm not known for being on the battlefield, and besides that, I know the Principle Office best. I'll have to pull off the rest of it. There's a little bit more planning that needs to be done before we execute this, but by this time 3 minutes from now, I expect to have Phong helping me make these reports._

_"Still low on energy, but Al thinks he can get some for me tomorrow. End of report."_

"Pause." Megabyte was watching Bob rather than the recorded message now. "You know, Bob, the mouth open look really suits us."

Bob's mouth snapped shut and he threw a look of irritation at the viral simulation before he stared back at the recording. "She decided to go to the Principle Office? _Alone_?"

"Not alone, Bob. She had a small force with her. Really, it wasn't much more reckless than all the things _you_ used to do."

"I always had Glitch to back me up..." Bob shook his head slightly and turned to look at the other blue 'Guardian.' "And no entry for... What did you do?"

"Play."

_Dot was on the screen again, but now she looked different. Emaciated. Her eyes were hard yet seemed to be staring at something in the far distance. Every angstrom of visible skin was mottled with various stages of healing bruises. Her nailless fingers touched in front of her face._

_"Minute 557. I've escaped from—"_

"Stop!" Bob stood up and turned, swinging at the simulation. The image smashed into nothingness, but another doppelganger turned up behind him. He hit that one, too, again and again until he'd tired himself out. He stood there, panting.

"You really can't touch me anymore, you know. I wonder, is the real me out there somewhere? Sipping on an energy shake under the watchful eyes of a Guardian in the Supercomputer? Or in Mainframe, playing at being a sprite? Or... did you compromise your beliefs? Did you delete me, despite your theories on reformatting viruses? I suppose either way, you've learned of _this_ too late to find vengeance."

_"Justice,"_ Bob spat.

"Whatever you want to call it." Megabyte waved dismissively but smiled indulgently. "You should really watch the rest of it, don't you think?"

Bob stared at him, grinding his teeth together. Glitch clicked and beeped. Bob turned off the organizer, and stormed out of Dot's office with it. He walked purposefully and angrily down the corridors until he reached the armory, slamming the door open.

"Everyone out," he said, his eyes focused now on the real virus. Megabyte, held safely behind the firewall, tilted his head lazily at the Guardian, his eyes catching on the organizer for a moment before he smiled.

"But, sir... Ms Matrix said we were to keep a crew here at all times..."

"Just stand outside the door," said Bob. The binomes had never seen him so _furious_. Bob was usually so upbeat! "Go. Now." The binomes ran out the door, and Bob slammed it shut after them.

He stared at Megabyte, allowing a cold rage to rise within him, remembering the pain in her eyes. He'd _hurt_ her. The timestamps indicated he'd hurt her for over an _hour_. And there he stood, as though he'd done nothing wrong. "You know, I never thought I'd even consider it," said Bob quietly. "Deleting you. But right now... if I could open that firewall without endangering the system, I would find a way to do it with my bare hands."

The virus tilted his head. "Why, Bob, I cannot imagine what could have caused this newly found anger. Was it something I did?"

Bob turned on the organizer. Dot's pain stared out from it.

"What did you do to her?"

Megabyte smiled lazily. "Why, Bob... we played chess."

"This," Bob ground out, "is not the face of a woman who was playing chess."

"Really? I suppose we play chess rather differently." Megabyte laughed a little as he watched Bob fume.

"The woman in this image has been starved and tortured."

"Incidental damage, really," said Megabyte with a bored wave. "And mostly self-inflicted. Admittedly, in the initial phases..." His eyelids lowered and he smiled. "I amused myself several times imagining that you were in that little capsule I created for you, watching through the window as I burned her, or let her suffocate under a mass of wires..." He shrugged, his eyes opening fully as he looked at the guardian. "But eventually, my enjoyment paled. You would never see it, after all. In the end, it was about _her_ , not you. And her torment was not the point."

Bob's hands were clenched into fists so tightly that he could feel a bit of energy leaking out the sides where his nails punctured his palms. "Then what _was_ the point?"

The virus smiled. "You really should watch the rest, Bob. See for yourself what she's been hiding from you all this time."

The guardian and the virus stared at each other, a contest of wills, but while Bob's face was deadly serious, Megabyte's was superior and amused. Bob blinked first, needing answers more than a win against the giant contained in the firewall. "Play."

"— _the Principle Office. The delay should make it obvious that we failed to free Phong. Mouse is going to delete me when she realizes I'm working instead of dealing with my own obvious energy deficit and healing, but I_ can't _sit around doing nothing."_

_She took a breath. "Mouse and Specky have done their best, but our resources are low. I may have to sacrifice additional assets to increase our stockpiles." She closed her eyes for a moment. "No loss should be acceptable, but... 16 binomes for enough materials to power 48 hand-canons and energy for the remainder to survive on. If the deletion rate is that low, we should be able to continue._

_"I worry about attrition rates. We don't have absolute loyalty like Megabyte has, or an easy way to increase our numbers through viral infection. I—"_

_She sat there for a while, doing nothing on the recording, then her eyes opened. "I am worried that I might be compromised. During my captivity, Megabyte and his Doctor..." She shook her head slowly. "No. Compromise is not possible," she muttered. "And if it were, I would still be required to lead..." She went quiet again._

_"I_ want _to surrender to him," she said finally. "But I_ can't _. I have to win. I feel like my base level programming is in conflict with itself. I don't understand... I_ will _win against him, regardless of cost. That will stop him... No. I—" She shook for a moment and pressed her fingertips to her head, face distorting with pain for a moment, but then she took a deep breath and looked back at the camera, uncannily calm._

_"It seems my mental health may be a line item now._

_"In any case: I can't afford hope anymore. He told me happy endings are for children, and he was right. Phong is lost to me. Bob most likely was deleted seconds after arriving in the Web. Enzo and AndrAIa are nullified, and I ought to understand that no science will change nulls back to sprites. I've squandered my resources in this war, and if I'm to win, I need to fight on his terms._

Bob frowned. " _His_ terms?" he muttered. He was doubtful that a sprite could ever win a fight on Megabyte's terms.

_"New strategies are needed. If I worry too much about system stability, we won't be able to regain control... I'm going to stop worrying about damage to the firmware. End of report."_

Bob pressed the pause button and shook his head, considering the entirety of the entry. There was something strange about the whole thing. "She's talking like she's fighting an infection. A deep urge to surrender, conflicting statements, even using pain against oneself... it's textbook... but you _can't_. You're not capable of it."

"You're hardly that low density, Bob," came a voice from behind him. Great. Stereo. He turned to look at the fake Megabyte, a strong urge to disable the organizer entirely coming over him for a moment... but now that he'd started, he needed the rest of the answers. He needed to understand what Dot was hiding, why she didn't trust him, why she'd said such awful things. He needed it, and he couldn't get what he needed if he threw the organizer into the deepest pit he could find in G-Prime. Instead, he listened. "Remember," the deep voice rumbled, "I've read your graduate paper."

"My graduate paper." He paused, his mind racing back through the conversation when it hit him suddenly. He blinked slowly. "A novel form of infection."

The alias smiled. "Yes. The kind of infection only a sprite could come up with." He stepped over to Bob and loomed, all ten nanometers of viral simulation towering over the blue sprite.

"I'm sure you're already racing through scenarios," said the real Megabyte, and Bob spun around to face him once more through the firewall. "Your theoretical protocols were entirely for viruses and wouldn't work on sprites; your reconstruction scenarios would never have taken hold... and you're entirely right. They required a great deal of additional research and effort."

Bob shook his head. If she'd been hurt, infected— No. It didn't matter. What Megabyte had done was temporary. There was no lasting effect. "There was an antivirus scan and decontamination after the restart." Bob pressed some buttons on Dot's organizer, connected it to the archives and pulled up a file. "There."

_They were all standing in front of the Principle Office, cheers all around. The system was back, beautiful and shining. Baudway was back online, the rest of the sectors had powered up. Dot and Bob were looking over the system. The camera panned away from them, but Bob brought it back._

_The Tor was deconstructed. The viral binomes were being decontaminated. Bob was looking out over it all, and Dot... she closed her eyes for a moment as a wave passed over her. And after a while, they both looked at each other at the same time, and she smiled, and they kissed._

He calmed a little. Bob stopped the footage. "She'd pulled away before. When the system was crashing, I took her in my arms, and we looked at each other, and I thought we were going to kiss, but she pulled away. She didn't want me to..."

"Yes, yes. Viral code is hostile to Guardians, regardless of my sister's... proclivities."

Bob was quiet. This wasn't so bad. It wasn't something he'd have wished on anyone, and most certainly not _her_ , but if this was her secret, he could mend the rift in their relationship. There really wasn't anything to worry about.

"Do you see now, Guardian? How completely you failed her? How your arrogance led to her downfall?"

Bob smiled at the simulation. "I don't think so. Dot's doing just _fine_. But thank you for your concern."

"Is she, Bob? Is she really?"

The sprite looked at Megabyte warily and tapped his fingers against his leg as he tried to piece everything together. Was he wrong? He needed to put the pieces together.

She'd been infected, somehow, through Megabyte's application of Bob's own techniques, which really seemed impossible. Reformatting a virus was a lot more technical than he could do in Mainframe. As Phong liked saying, 'This isn't the Supercomputer'. They simply didn't have the equipment.

But with viral thoughts behind his, using his methods as a type of _infection_... Dot had been starved in the recording, possibly to lower her chances of fighting. _Bob_ had obviously never included torture, but his initial ideas had included a lot of talking to the virus, preparing them, convincing them that their methods were wrong and that they couldn't win— he'd been working on _that_ with Megabyte himself for days before he'd been sent to the web. Bob didn't believe Megabyte's line about self-inflicted wounds, but for a virus to take his theoretical talks to a violent extreme? Yes, Bob could see that. Megabyte certainly wouldn't have been able to rewrite her code the way Bob had intended with reformatting, but that Doctor of his might have come up with some sort of device to push instructions through her PID and deep into her core processing systems after she'd been weakened.

And then she'd been fixed, and Megabyte had shown up and insinuated himself into her life, and she'd ended up with some network connection back to the virus that had done _this_ to her, and now— now!— she was suddenly processing it all at once, without help, and of _course_ she was phreaking out.

Bob nodded to himself. He wasn't wrong. She was perfectly fine, just suffering another bout of self-recrimation over the system. If any of this was relevant, it was all in her head. There was nothing wrong with Dot.

Bob turned the organizer off and turned back to Megabyte. "Yes. She _is_." He looked the virus in his eyes. "You know what, Megabyte? After I reformat you, after I fix you, I am going to send you to some other system where she will never have to deal with you again. You're not going to be in the same room as her again."

It was late. He'd talk to her about it next cycle, do his best to stay completely non-confrontational. She'd probably be angry that he'd looked at her organizer... maybe he could avoid directly challenging her on anything he'd learned... maybe he could go to Phong, the old sprite was better at plans than even Dot... or perhaps the Guardian Collective would have some ideas, although that would certainly mean a lecture or two from Turbo...

He opened the door and let the system binomes back inside.

"You _still_ don't understand," called out Megabyte. 


	6. Link Error

He returned to Dot's office, far more calm now than he had been. He sat down on the couch, putting the organizer down, and thanked the User that she was safe. He understood her fear now. He understood it all. She'd been injured, infected and abused, pushed beyond her code's ability to heal... and when she'd been cleansed of it all, she'd immediately been asked to fight a virus, an even more dangerous one, who'd managed to infect everyone and everything she loved most. And then Megabyte had returned to hurt her again. It was no wonder she was overreacting! It was _almost_ reasonable.

All that damage he'd caused. And then there were the infection methods Megabyte had used... Bob wondered how long it had taken Dot to recover. He wondered how long the infection had remained, wondered, had it weakened at all or remained at full strength until the restart?

He tapped his fingers together and looked at the organizer speculatively. Megabyte had used his research paper with a virus's techniques and goals. And yet, there might be some sort of information in there. Something he could glean from how it had worked on Dot. She was recovered, after all. It was just scientific curiosity, really. And it was helpful! If he knew how bad things had gotten, he wouldn't underestimate. She'd always intended him to watch it, anyways. There was no need to cast away her original intentions, he reasoned. If he just watched a few more of the entries, to make sure Megabyte hadn't tried anything else, well, that was just... prudence! Dot would appreciate that!

He reached out and turned the organizer back on. The alias reappeared, standing in the middle of the room as though he'd never left at all. "Guardian. I thought you were finished," said the simulacrum.

Bob shrugged. "I'm just going to browse some of the rest. See if there's anything I can learn to help with my reformat of the real you."

"Hm." Megabyte pretended to sit next to Bob, looking over the sprite's shoulder with feigned interest. "Well, then, which entries shall we watch next?"

"Do you still want to prove your point, that I failed her, ruined her life? Why don't you go ahead and choose for me?"

The simulation looked at him with a calculating look his eyes. Bob could almost see the circuits processing before the image of Megabyte nodded. "As you wish," he said.

_"Minute 600. The diagnostic program has declared a recovery." Dot did look an awful lot better than in her previous report. Her hair was shiny again, her face nearly unblemished, and her nails had regrown. "Mouse won't be blocking me from continuing my work. I have some plans to be implemented over several minutes, and another which might take an hour._

_"G-Prime is down from when Hexadecimal damaged it, and Megabyte hasn't been able to get the internal Principle Office settings to generate the volume he needs, so he's been using Baudway for the majority of his manufacturing. Seven missions over four minutes is all that it will take to break the power connections."_

"Break the..." Bob's looked at the recording with a nervous confusion returning to his voice. This wasn't what he'd expected. He'd expected... well, maybe something about Megabyte's attacks? Or even something that showed her state of mind. But this? Breaking power connections was dangerous. And the way she said it, too, the word choice, the _tone_... She wasn't saying it in a way that made him think of an infection being fought, nor in a way that sounded like that fight had been lost. Her voice was almost bored. She might as well have been talking about setting up a new data park. He shook his head and tried to keep his mind on the entry.

 _"...assume that Megabyte did it because he doesn't care about system performance. If I_ don't _convince everyone that it's his fault, I expect attrition will be high. Either way, a mission success will mean that Megabyte needs to spend time and resources fixing the problem, the same way I would have if I were in charge. While he's doing that, we can regroup and restock. I expect that missions after this will be 57% more successful for the next 20 minutes._

 _"And while he's busy... I'm going to try to get Hex working against him. Hex and Megabyte haven't been allied for a while. I'll have to assume the city will take_ some _damage, but that's going to affect Megabyte more than us._

_"Current resources standing firm at 198 binomes, 17 power cannons, 64 guns in various states of charge. My next report will be after the plan is complete, one way or another."_

"Pause." It just didn't make sense, no matter how he put it together. He turned to look at the virus. "Your infection told her to surrender, so what's she doing at this point? Weakening the resistance? Why did you want her to damage the system?"

" _Want_ her to—" Megabyte's eyebrow raised, and for nearly a nanosecond he just stared at Bob. Then he smiled indulgently, which didn't help Bob's mood any. He was confused, and here was Megabyte's simulation giving him the runaround... "Ah. I see. Perhaps we should try another—"

The door opened suddenly, and Dot entered. Her eyes were on Megabyte, angry and determined, as if she'd expected the virus. "I don't know how you got out, but I'm here. Don't you _dare_ touch him, Megabyte." The guardian's eyes were lost in her presence completely; she looked like some sort of avenging angel, ready to go toe to toe with Megabyte, no matter the cost.

"Bob _let_ me escape." The image of Megabyte moved slightly, placing himself between the two sprites. "He's far too trusting of viruses, don't you think?"

Dot flinched slightly, but she suddenly brandished a wrench in front of her, a live wire embedded in its adjustable hinge, and advanced. "You—"

She was going to attack. Bob's thoughts moved fast, simulating to the end result of such an attack which would go through the simulation and find her hitting _him_ with that live wire. He stood quickly, stepping through the image of the virus to catch her wrist before she could swing. "No, wait— Dot, it's not real. It's just a simulation."He relaxed his grip even as she stared in alarm. "He's not real." Her eyes rapidly changed focus between Megabyte and Bob and the tense, aggressive energy left her shoulders, and they seemed to sag under some unseen weight. "Dot, what are you doing here?"

"I..." She looked confused suddenly. "I guess I had a nightmare," she said uncertainly. "It was so real... He was out of the firewall, told me to meet him here. He told me he was going to— I don't understand. He's still in the armory?" Bob nodded. "So where did this simulation come from?"

"He was embedded in a secure section on your organizer."

"My _organizer_...? What..." She looked beyond him and saw her face on the screen, then pushed past him, grabbing it. "What were you—" She looked at it and spun around. "You had no right to look at this—" Bob raised a hand, but Dot looked at the Megabyte simulation. "And how did _you_ end up in _there_? This was secure, Guardian protocols—"

"My dear, we were engaged. It was as simple as pi to gain access to your organizer, and surely you'd think I'd want to see your perspective for myself." Megabyte smiled. Dot looked at him, horrified. "Oh, and Dot? I took the liberty of adding my own password. That's how _Bob_ got in."

Bob blinked in surprise, then scowled. "Just turn it off," said Bob, shutting the door behind him. "The simulation doesn't run if the organizer's off."

Dot did as he asked, but stared at the empty space the simulation had left for a while before putting the organizer down on the table. Bob watched her from behind, wondering if he ought to say something, but... well, there was something about her stance that made him think he should just be quiet.

He wondered if he was wrong when she spun around slowly and looked at him with something akin to malice in her gaze. Bob swallowed. "You had no right to look at any of this," she said. Her voice was quiet, but he could hear the anger as if it were a physical force. "How _dare_ you..." Her eyes were burning.

Well, he'd wanted to talk to her. This wasn't exactly _how_ , but it was too late to change things now, and he was pretty sure she wasn't going to shut down. "I'm sorry," he said.

"'I'm _sorry_?' Is that all you have to say for yourself?"

"It was for your own good."

" _My own good_...?" Her mouth opened and shut in disbelief. "Did you know what was on this?" He winced as she walked up to him. "You're one of the smartest sprites I know. If you didn't know before you launched it, you'd have figured it out quickly. So what part of _I don't want to talk about Megaframe_ did you understand to mean _I want you to go through my personal records about it_?"

"I said I'm sorry!"

"How _dare_ you!" She slapped him, the sound echoing through the room, then nearly collapsed into the sofa he'd been sitting on, face in her hands, and let out a quiet sob.

Bob rubbed his cheek. Had he really deserved _that_ response? He supposed he had crossed a line, but still.... It had been for her benefit! So he'd looked at her organizer, it wasn't like she'd ever tried to hide it from him! The organizer, that is. And what she _had_ hidden, well, what had happened during the seige of Mainframe had left her with damage, left him unable to help her, left them both unhappy.

He looked at her. Maybe he'd crossed a few lines? Hitting him and then sitting down to cry wasn't really a _crossed one line_ sort of reaction, was it? But still, the entries in her journalling, well, she'd coded them for _him_. If she hadn't wanted him to see them, she could have deleted them, right?

But the organizer had been locked... _Megabyte_ had given him a password... a password the virus had added somehow.

He hung his head. What had he been thinking, using that? The virus had tried to destroy her, and there was Bob, taking advice from him.

Maybe he'd crossed a whole vector-based game worth of lines. He felt like a cad. He sighed and sat down beside her, elbows on his knees, his eyes on the organizer, and cast about for something to say. _Sorry_ wasn't cutting it. "You've still got a mean right hook."

She gave a strangled, surprised laugh, then turned her head to look at him. Her eyes took in the darkened skin on his cheek and she relented, tension seeping out of her shoulders. "Do you need some ice chips?"

And where would she get _that_ at this time of the cycle with power out everywhere? Well, it didn't matter, he'd certainly taken bigger hits both in and out of games. "I'll be fine."

She rubbed her forehead as she nodded and took a shuddering breath. "All right. What's done is done." She sniffled and looked at him. She was trying too hard to look brave as she asked, "How much did you watch?"

"You were talking about breaking power couplings," he said tentatively. She shook her head and moved her jaw around. "I must have misunderstood, though," he added in a rush. "I don't know what I was watching..."

She nodded, closed her eyes and massaged her neck, then opened her eyes again. She looked resigned, and he knew in that moment: she'd never have told him about this. Maybe she wouldn't have told _anyone_. She was going to go off and be some private citizen of Mainframe, or worse, get Turbo's help to run off to some other system where she'd blend in to the background. He'd never have known, and she'd have avoided talking to him until he became too discouraged to try.

It hurt. He felt almost as betrayed as when she'd chosen Megabyte. Maybe more! This whole thing was _huge_. Megabyte was right: she didn't trust him. Did she really love him if she couldn't trust him with this? If she was willing to let him go?

Bob's compassion reminded him that what Megabyte had done was to torture her, using Bob's own work as inspiration. It reminded him that what Megabyte had done must have left scars, that she must still be sensitive to it. But even so... he couldn't help but feel almost as upset about her deception as Megabyte's. She was a _sprite_ , after all!

He scowled at himself. Was he really willing to grant more forgiveness to Megabyte than to Dot? The whole thought process felt unworthy of a guardian.

After a full nano of the uncomfortable silence, Dot put the organizer down and leaned back into the soft material of the seating. "You were watching me choosing to win," she said quietly. "There's a cost to victory. There's always a cost."She took a breath and opened one eye. "I take it you saw... the entries before that one?" Bob nodded. She looked down and took a deep breath in. "You probably think— You know, Megabyte talked to me a lot," she said, closing it again. "About winning and losing. What it takes to win. Sometimes, he even made sense, if you can imagine that. Flaw in my code," she added with a self-deprecating laugh.

Bob shook his head. He couldn't let her believe that. "He was infecting you," said the guardian, his voice soft and soothing. She let out a short burst of laughter. "Dot, he infected you. And it's _my_ fault he had a way to do it."

She shook her head in annoyance and looked at him. "Bob, I was not infected. We've _been_ infected. Daemon—"

"—was a supervirus. Of course it would feel different." He put a hand on her arm. "Dot, whatever else happened in that siege, it wasn't your fault. What he did to you wasn't your fault. _None of it_ was your fault."

She shook her head. "Bob."

"I took a look in the archives. The infection cleared with the antivirus." She shook her head again and leaned forward.

"How can you have listened to all of that and still—" She frowned, then nodded determinedly. "All right. You can't take back what you've already heard, so now, you're going to have to listen to the rest of it. I'm not going to let you believe it wasn't as bad as it was." She turned the organizer on and pressed play.

_"Minute 610. My plan worked. The sector is down, no one thinks I orchestrated it, and Megabyte's viral forces are trying to repair it in small crews. I'm not sure if he's underestimating me, or testing my forces, but I know I'll need to respond soon. We're going to take some of those crews out, but I need to be careful. If we take out any more of the system architecture in those areas, it's going to be a lot harder to manage, and everyone's nervous._

_"I visited Hex three minutes ago. She was a little warmer than I expected. I think she's been bored without Bob... still not sure why she hasn't bothered attacking Megabyte on her own, and she wasn't particularly interested in telling me. Kept circling me, telling me she liked the changes I'd made. That virus is completely random, and I know I shouldn't trust her... but she was willing to work with me, which is a lot more than I expected..._

_"I've... asked her if she'll take down the shim linker between the Principle Office and the rest of the city. It will slow down his communication with the rest of the system. It's going to make things difficult once we've retaken things, but I think it's worth it. And I don't... I don't want him to continue to have access to it._

_"Resources are up. A few new binomes have come online from the training camps we set up. 200 in total. Lost a cannon in one of the operations, so 16 there, but the techs have managed to get a car back up. I've got enough energy to keep everyone running for another 40 minutes, wiring levels are high. I've even got memory chips." She smiled. "One of these days, we'll have a real party! But until then, the fight continues. Report finished."_

Bob's arms were crossed and he shook his head.

"She did it, you know," came Megabyte's forgotten voice. Bob's mouth twisted as he looked up at the simulation. "Worked with my sister, damaged quite a bit of system architecture. It was nearly impossible for me to keep up with fixing the damage she was doing. The shim linker was particularly damaging, as you well know, and impossible to repair without help from outside the system. I was furious, but also... quite proud of her."

"Proud?" It didn't make any sense. He felt distinctly ill as Megabyte circled them both, the simulated body phasing in and out around them. No wonder she was feeling guilty— but it wasn't her fault. She was damaged. "How much damage did she do?" he asked finally, then turned his glare on Megabyte. "How much damage did you _make_ her do?"

"I didn't make her do anything," said the virus. "Did I, Dot?"

She shook her head. "No." She scrolled down in the entries. "No, Bob. You're not listening. It wasn't him, it was _me_. I told you before, he only gave me opportunities. I— okay. This is the worst entry. It's... if you can't understand with this, I guess I'll have to say it out loud and I... I haven't managed, not even to myself and— and I'm babbling." She looked at him, fear and determination warring in her eyes. Her hand hovered over the organizer for a moment. "Okay. Right. Just press play..." She bit her lip before she hit the playback button, her movement sharp.

_"Minute 812. Mouse called me on it today. The damage being done to the system. She thinks I'm doing it on purpose. I didn't tell her she was right, of course... I told her I would never hurt the system... in my head, I was begging her to drop it."_

_Dot raised her hands in front of her and stared at them as if they belonged to someone else. "My finger tips were suddenly... glowing. I touched her hand, and I felt... strange. And she dropped the subject like she'd never brought it up in the first place. She didn't ask about the damage, or ask how we could minimize it, or even whether I was making some sort of tactical errors that were causing the issues. It was like she'd never—" She shook her head._

_"I must be hallucinating. Bad energy? I've had some Apple cider lately, but I don't see how that would do anything like this. Did she see how upset it was making me? I've never known her to drop anything that easily, but... Maybe I imagined the conversation? Well..." She let out a shuddering breath. "I'll see the diagnostics again soon._

_"Resources holding steady."_

Bob stared past her. "But you can't have..." He was at a loss for words. Changing Mouse's _mind_? With a touch? And yet, a memory nagged at him. A moment when he'd had thoughts of Hex flooding his head, a moment when he'd been _confused_ as she'd touched him. Guardian code reasserted itself in the presence of distortions... but sprites couldn't generate such things. Commands could. Or...

Dot nodded at him with concern. "So you understand now?"

"No. No, I don't." He searched his thoughts for an explanation while she made a face, and suddenly, he had it! "It's just like with your hand, the _bite_. It's—"

"Bob!" She put her head in her hands. "It's not an _infection_."

"It's a viral characteristic," said Megabyte's simulation with a smile. Dot looked at Bob with worry and gave him the tiniest nod of her head.

"That's not _possible_."

Megabyte leaned over and nearly whispered into Bob's ear: "Your research made it possible."

"No!" Bob looked up for a moment. The idea was impossible. Untenable. _Horrifying_. He simply refused to accept it, casting his thoughts about for another explanation. Megabyte was a liar and Dot was— He wasn't sure. Dot knew herself, didn't she? But Dot was a wonderful sprite, a good friend, and as smart as the day was long. A virus couldn't be all of those things, not even a benign virus. There was only one possibility: Dot was _mistaken_. He shook his head and closed his eyes. "No," he repeated, putting a hand up to stop them both.

She touched his upper arm gently. "Bob, when we were up there, in core control, when... Bob, I was being erased. I wasn't going make it," she said, her voice quiet, urgent and, most of all, _afraid_. Bob wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms. "And then _you_ were there. I was so cold, and you were so warm, and I didn't want to decompile, and suddenly... suddenly I had energy, and you were collapsing." She took a deep breath. "I've been thinking about it since you locked him in the firewall. I can't come up with any other explanation."

"But this is... It's completely random! How did you come up with _this_ as an explanation?"

She took another deep breath. "During the hunt—" She paused frowned. "When he broke my hand, he told me that I..." She stopped and shook her head. She looked pained. She couldn't say it. "That I always was... he triggered some code and..." She removed her touch from him and buried her face in her hands again.

"So he was _lying_. Dot, you can't trust him. He's a virus."

" _So am I_ ," she blurted out, then pursed her lips, as if she could stop the words that had already been said. "User, I _hate_ him... but Bob, you can't marry me. You _need_ to hate me enough to destroy me, for Mainframe's sake. All I've ever been is..." She took a deep breath and looked up at him. "I can't be the Command.Com anymore. I'm damaging to everything I touch. Everything is ruined, and it's me doing it."

"No, it's not. And... and it can't happen. Look, Dot, if I'm not willing to delete Hex or Megabyte, how could you think I'd ever be willing to hurt _you_...?" She shrugged, and Bob struggled with what to say. "Okay, look, let's say it's not an infection," he said quietly, an admission. Horror and wonder felt the same at the moment, reflected in his eyes. "We can still come up with a solution, one that doesn't involve _destroying_ you."

"I suppose you could reformat her," said Megabyte, his words like acid to Bob's ears. Bob shook his head. Reformatting was too dangerous— it might change her whole personality. He'd never risk her like that. "Of course, I didn't have the technology for it. I could only _alter_. I could only _add_. A selective deletion is much more difficult." The virus leaned in. "Tell me, Bob. How does it feel, knowing that your true love _is_ a virus, forever and always?"

"Take that back," said Bob, turning to look at him.

"Which part, the true love or the virus?"

"She is not a virus, not like you," replied the Guardian, speaking through clenched teeth. "Whatever you _altered_ or _added_ was fixed by the system restart, so I can fix it again."

"You think it was fixed, Guardian? Really?"

"I saw it." There was fury in Bob's brown eyes. "The system repaired her during the virus scan. Your schema failed."

"As it repaired Hexadecimal and turned her into a regular sprite?" Bob stared, silent in the face of that question. All Hex had needed was a power-up, and she'd been back to her chaotic behavior, her random dances, her powerful, dangerous, fragmented moods. "If it had truly been _fixed_ , I doubt I'd have been able to reactivate it. It would have needed to be redone."

" _You_ —" Bob could barely breathe, but Dot let out a sob beside him, and he automatically put a hand on her back, rubbing in a circle. She was the one whose code had been altered. He turned to look at her. "Listen, Dot, you're still the same sprite that you've always been. You never used any of this on purpose against anyone. We'll find a way to get control over it. You'll be okay." He tried to pull her towards him, a hug from the side, and she crumpled into him.

Megabyte leaned in with a smile, part of his simulated body phasing through them. "You're in denial, Guardian. Control over it will only increase her already present viral tendencies."

It was disturbing to say the least. He didn't have a clue about whether the virus was telling the truth or just saying something that would make them more upset. It was definitely making _her_ more upset, and she let out a sob into his chest. "Dot, ignore him." She shook her head. "Hey, who do you want to listen to, the virus or the Guardian?" She took a breath and looked at Bob, giving him a slight nod. He offered an encouraging smile in response.

The virus in question watched them for a moment more, then hissed, a quiet sound that filled the room. "I'll play the last entry for you, Guardian. Perhaps then you will understand the danger you hold in your embrace."

 _"Minute... 1023. My little brother is back. My_ big _brother... he's grown. AndrAIa is also here, and Frisket. They even brought the Saucy Mare. It'll be good to see Captain Capacitor._

 _"And... of course..._ Bob _. I think I'm afraid of him. He'll see through me, he'll see what I've done to the system, and I'm not going to be able to... to... distract him. Or, or maybe I_ could _. I don't even know who I am anymore. Not someone Bob could love. And it doesn't matter anyways because he's just an_ asset _. Like everyone else. He has to be. He_ has _to be!" She put her fingers to her head._

 _"I've been building up resources, and it's time to put the plan into action. With the addition of two Guardians, a game sprite and Gavin's people, we should be able to make one final push into the Principle Office. Only... I don't know if... Bob will hate me... they'll_ all _hate me when they find out the only way this plan works is... I can't let them know..." She squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her face, her shoulders shaking. "It's probably going to destroy us. But..."_

 _There were tears on her cheeks as she looked at the recorder. "But the system will be_ mine _again—_ No. _" She shook her head, looking desperate._ "Ours _. Mainframe will belong to_ itself _again. Even if it's only for a cycle. Even if it's only for a_ nano _—!"_

_The sound of the door opening, and Dot looked up at the door, startled. "Dot, honey?"_

_"Mouse." The recording ended._

Bob stared for a moment. "Wait... what... Megabyte didn't engineer the system crash?"

Dot didn't look up, just shook her head. "Yes. No. I don't— I knew it was a risk with the plan I had. A high one. And I took it because I couldn't stand one Planck time more in Megaframe. It's my f—"

"No," Bob interrupted vehemently. "No. It's not your fault. And," he added, remembering her words, "listen, I don't hate you, Dot." He shook his head and pulled away so he could look into her eyes. Yes, he could see now, there was a method in the data structure she'd constructed for herself, but she was building it with the wrong inheritance entirely. She'd been infected with viral code, even if it wasn't a traditional infection, she'd been misused, and... stacks and sockets, she'd had uncontrollable viral code added to her processing somehow, using Bob's own research.

_None of that was her fault._

"You don't deserve anything he did to you." He needed her to believe him. He squeezed her hands, and she looked uncertainly at her fingers in his. "Look, Dot? You are not a danger to anyone who isn't attacking the system."

"But Bob, I... Look at what I did." She nodded at the room. "Even before he came back," she said with a shaking voice. "Defeating Daemon, I had us locking off systems, I put everyone in danger over and over again. I ignored what it was doing to you... And I told Enzo to go into the games. What if that was because I'm—" She stopped and shook her head. "Because I'm— And then I might as well have _ordered_ Hex's fragmentation—"

"Hex? Dot, if anyone's at fault for Hex, it's me." He made a face and shook his head. "No— It was _her_ choice, a choice to save us all. She was a hero. She sacrificed herself for all of us. And while I can't deny that part of me is glad you felt guilty treating me and Enzo the way you did, it was a _war_ , and we saved the net. Daemon was a supervirus, a _cron virus_. Yes, things went wrong, yes, people got hurt, but we can't be upset that the net was saved. I'm not sorry for that, and you can't be either."

"And after? I asked _you_ to marry me, but then he came, and I chose him instead... He made me feel safe. A _virus_ made me feel safe and the real guardian didn't. And _I_ chose him. Me! I did that! Doesn't that matter to you?"

"Of course it matters. He hurt us both. That was his whole point. When he asked you to marry him—" Bob looked down. There was no way to sugar coat it. "I wanted to quit file right there when you rejected me, but I don't blame you. I _won't_ blame you. Would you have chosen him if you'd known who and what he was?"

"No, but... he said viral code is hostile to Guardian code. And Hex... And I'm... What if...?"

Bob closed his eyes for a moment. What if. It wasn't worth it to think in those terms. Dot's planning capabilities were getting her into trouble. She was overthinking. Was it possible his own denial was making her feel this way? If he didn't show her that he could accept her, and she didn't think she could change, that _what if_ might seem more like a certainty.

"Okay." He looked back up into her eyes. "Maybe it's been there this whole time and he was able to reactivate some of it. Maybe he just... knew how to reinsert it. I don't know. What I _do_ know is that _you_ , Dot Matrix, can control it. We will figure out how, because you're sitting here holding _my_ hands, not Megabyte's. That means something." He tugged her closer and put his arms around her when she didn't resist. "That means _everything_ , Dot. I love you, and I promise you, we will figure this out together."

"I love you, too," she whispered, tentatively raising her own arms to encircle him.

Bob smiled and breathed in her hair.

"Pah. How utterly _nauseating_."

"Why didn't I turn that stupid thing off?" Bob reached out blindly for the organizer, unwilling to let go of Dot, even as he noticed Megabyte hadn't stopped hissing.

"You know, if _either_ of you were as intelligent as I've sometimes given you credit for, you'd have been more concerned when the viral infection on my darling bride's organizer started doing things on it's own." The pair looked up, startled. "And giving it system level access to the archives that could lead to the firewall you'd set up in the _armory_ of all places? Tut-tut, Bob."

Bob stood, and Dot rose with him. "Glitch—"

"Now, now, Guardian, no need for pointless violence against Ms Matrix's office walls. This _is_ only an alias. And besides..." Dot grabbed Bob's arm suddenly, swaying, as Bob's vision started to blur. "Hm. Your timing was very nearly perfect, Herr Doktor." Dot fell backwards onto the couch, Bob trying to catch her even while he himself was falling.

"Glitch... emergency..."


	7. A Modern Attack

An indeterminate amount of time later, Bob awakened, eyes opening slowly. A makeshift firewall lit the area in red around him as he sat up, rubbing his aching head. "Glitch...?" The keytool beeped a greeting. "Did you get a message out?" A negative click, followed by a series of clicks and beeps relaying technical information. "A jammer, huh? Wonder when he got that." The keytool beeped again. "Oh, yeah, when we left him in the armory. Whose bright idea was that?"

He looked around through the bright red light. The room was fairly small, barely sizable enough to hold everything in it. It looked a bit like an office...? He wasn't quite sure, what with the distortion from the barrier around him, but— yes, there were two desks pushed off in the corner, and a smattering of writing utensils and crumpled up papers littered the ground.

To his right was a wall, and a doorway at an angle that he couldn't see through, though he did recognize the two monochrome infected principle office police guarding it— in fact, he recognized with a frown that they were two of the ones he'd left down in the armory. To his left, another binome was typing something on a machine. All three had Megabyte's tendrils still embedded within them. Herr Doktor was also off to Bob's left along with his Igor, staring at a fourth monochrome infected, suspended in a glass enclosure.

A table and two chairs sat ominously alone in the center of the room, but across from him, in another area surrounded by firewall red, an outline of a female sprite, green skin nearly black to his eyes due to the layers of hard filtering between them. "Dot!" he called out to her, trying to pitch his voice only loud enough to reach the woman. "Dot, are you okay?"

There was no answer from her, but he could hear the clanking sound of the virus headed towards them from outside. "Shift..." Bob frowned and scrambled to his feet. "Glitch, scan the firewall for weaknesses." The metallic sound was getting louder and louder, and Glitch's readout wasn't detecting anything.

They were in some serious trouble here.

"Welcome to the day cycle, Guardian."

Bob smiled grimly. Day cycle? If it was day, everyone would know Megabyte was out; the system would be on the alert and people would be looking for him and Dot.

 _Unless_ , of course, they were still asleep from all the celebrations. The only ones to leave earlier than him and Dot had been Matrix and AndrAIa, and they might have decided to spend some quality time together rather than dealing immediately with system business when they woke.

All right, no need to panic, he'd gotten himself out of worse situations. "Hey, it's the host of the party. You know, the red lighting is definitely a few minutes ago, Megabyte."

"How droll." He looked at the binome at the controls. The binome pressed a button and the firewall around Dot went down. Bob peered through. The female sprite didn't look injured, thank the User, but she was still unconscious, and now, Megabyte was standing over her. "Ms Matrix, it is time for you to awaken." He waited a moment, then pulled his leg back, kicking her in the gut.

Dot let out a cry. "Leave her alone!" Bob said as the green sprite grabbed her abdomen and her eyes fluttered open.

"Calm yourself, Guardian. I'm not interested in physical harm..." Dot took a few deep breaths, then sat up. Her gaze darted about the room. She looked warily at Megabyte, worriedly at Bob in the firewall, confused at Herr Doktor, and then, she stilled completely, seemingly captivated by her view of the table and chairs. Bob could see just enough of Megabyte's face to watch the smile creeping onto his face. "My bride and I are going to play a game of chess."

Chess...? Bob's brow creased. What Megabyte had said before, that he and Dot had played... Bob couldn't imagine what it meant. Had they _really_ played _chess_ when he'd kidnapped her during the war? Dot's reaction seemed to imply it had meaning to her: her breathing had become shallow and rough, but when she looked Megabyte in the eye and spoke, her voice was steady and defiant. "I'm not your bride, and I'm not playing your game," she said. Megabyte watched her as she stood up. "You're going to let Bob out of there."

"Am I?" He sounded highly amused. She stared at him for a nano, her mouth a stubborn line, her hands in fists, until he started laughing. Her eyes unfocused and she took a step back, shaking. "Now, Dot, _that_ is why I like you so. You see an opportunity, and you attempt to exploit it."

"It was worth a try," she muttered.

The virus nodded sagely. "Yes, yes. But you need education on the use of your abilities. Shall I show you how that little mental manipulation trick is done, my dear?" He put a massive hand on her shoulder and almost instantly, she gasped, her breathing as heavy as if she'd just run for her life in a game. Her eyes closed and she shook for a moment, then she turned, almost mechanically, towards the chess set. Without opening her eyes, she walked over to the table. As she sat at one of the chairs, her eyes opened, and Bob had just enough time to glimpse terror in them before her command mask came down over her face.

Megabyte walked over to the firewall and smiled at Bob, blocking his view of Dot and cheerfully showing off his teeth. "I believe you wanted to know what kind of chess we played, Guardian? I appreciate the opportunity to show you."

"Let her go. You can have your vengeance on me," said Bob quietly.

Megabyte's smile broadened, a real feat for someone without any cheek left after his time in the web. "I believe I told you, Bob, that my vengeance will be on my terms? Now, then... Herr Doktor? Have you prepared the commands?"

"Yes, mein Fuhrer!"

Bob watched as the binome walked over to Dot until he was hidden behind the bulk of the virus. "Commands?" The guardian tried to move so that he could see what was happening, but there was no view around Megabyte.

Megabyte's eyes bored into Bob's through the filter of the firewall. "It's always better to have a willing chess partner, but when we first started playing... for some unfathomable reason, dear Dot refused. Deleting all the binomes of Mainframe to ensure her compliance was not a sustainable strategy. And so, Herr Doktor created an inducement."

Beyond where Bob could see, Dot protested. Bob frowned. "Can't have been much of one. She obviously doesn't want to play now."

"Ah, well. There was a readme file I saw once about a stick and a carrot..." Megabyte walked over and clamped a hand on her shoulder, holding her arm in place while the doctor roughly pressed something into her hand— into the flesh of her hand, until it melted _through_ her hand. Her face twisted with pain. Megabyte leaned down over her, his corrupted cheek right by hers. "Now then, a test," he said softly, and glanced over at the monochrome binome, who pressed a bright yellow button on the console.

Immediately, her eyes unfocused, and she whimpered. Her breathing increased, and she shook slightly.

"Yes," said the virus with an indolent pleasure in his voice. "It seems to be working just as before..."

"What are you doing to her?" A giant hand caressed her cheek. "Leave her alone, Megabyte!"

The virus placed a golden claw against her neck. "Move one angstrom out of line and I will rip her throat out," he crooned, his voice soft and soothing, almost gentle in the delivery of his threat. Bob stilled, tamping down both fear and rage as the firewall went down. He tried to calculate a way to get to her, but he'd never been good at plans, and he just couldn't risk it, not with Megabyte ready to delete her. "Herr Doktor, give the Guardian his copy," ordered the virus.

"Igor!" The doctor handed something round to his disfigured colleague, and the binome walked over to Bob before dropping a command at the guardian's feet. He returned to the doctor's side as the firewall went back up, and the blue sprite held his position, unwilling to move a muscle until Megabyte removed his claw, letting the threat expire.

The virus nodded and the monochrome binome pressed another button on his console. A sharp intake of breath,and Dot's eyes met Bob's for a moment. She blinked rapidly, then put her head in her hands and let out a deep, shuddering sob. Bob's heart ached; he had no way to comfort the sprite he loved, no way to help her, didn't even know what had been _done_ to her. The virus held every card at the moment. Held Bob himself motionless with threats.

"Now then, Guardian. You wish to know what I've done to her? Pick up the command at your feet, and I will let you experience it with her."

"No!" Dot's head shot up suddenly, her eyes meeting Bob's before quickly turning to Megabyte. Bob's brow creased and he looked down at the command while Dot spoke. "I'll play, Megabyte. Don't do that to him."

"It's his choice," said the virus, sending a smile towards the firewall. "To be honest, I should think he'd be pleased to see how his research plays out," said Megabyte.

"No." Dot looked at Bob, confused for a moment, then shook her head. The guardian bent down, his eyes serious as he contemplated the command. "Bob, you can't... you mustn't... please, trust me on this."

He wanted to. He really, really wanted to trust her, but there were things she hadn't told him. Things he'd needed to know. And he'd be DRMed before he willingly left himself in the dark again. "Glitch, scanner," he said. Bob didn't see Megabyte's hand clamp over Dot's mouth, nor his eyes alight with triumph, so focused was he on the results of Glitch's scans.

It took some work to decipher them, and Bob was glad that his keytool was version two, or it probably wouldn't have been able to get anything useful. According to Glitch, the command was mind altering, to an extent, but the code wouldn't be able to fool a Guardian's protocols... probably. It was stronger and more complex than the bug that Hex had once unleashed on the system, but more contained in its effects. He was safe from whatever it did, although he suspected it still wouldn't be particularly pleasant.

More interestingly, it somehow retained a connection outside of the firewall. If he let the command do its work, Glitch might be able to break through as well. It also might not. Bob frowned, considering the risk factors for a nano, then reached out for the circular command. It felt odd against his hand, strangely slimy and cold, like it was trying to get under his skin, but perhaps that was just the reaction to his own codecs.

"Test it," hissed Megabyte, and the world around him pixellated and dissolved.

He awoke, if that was the right word for it, in floating point park, the many levels of green grass surrounding him. He felt very confused, and tired like he'd been sleeping for days. Dot knelt beside him, eyes closed tightly. Her hair was grown out a little bit, as though she'd been here for a while. Her skin was pale, except where darkened circles marred her face. "Dot?"

Her shoulders hunched together quickly, and she looked over at him with bloodshot eyes. "I told you not to come," she whispered.

"Glitch—" he stopped, and looked down at his arm, feeling the difference suddenly. "No Glitch... Okay." He reached out to her. "Come on, Dot, we've got to get to the Principle Office." She shook her head, but he took her hands and pulled her to her feet. She swayed dangerously, and Bob pulled her to his side, steadying her.

"Bob, no, listen, we can't go anywhere," she said breathlessly as he pulled her along a small walking path. "We have to stay here. If we move—" She stumbled, and he tightened his hold on her.

"You're _ill_. We have to get you to the Principle Office," he repeated urgently.

If only he'd had Matrix's strength, he'd pick her up. Or if he'd had Glitch, he could have had his keytool make a wheelchair and pushed her along with it. What in the net had that command done, sent him into stasis for an hour? He couldn't seem to figure it out as he kept walking, steadying her as much as he could and ignoring her protests entirely until they were halfway across the system.

"Please, just _stop_ ," she begged.

"Dot, you need help, and I—" His voice stopped suddenly as he turned his head to look at her, then turned it further. Behind him was... _nothing_. As if the system had stopped existing as he walked, only the sea silently lapping against the circuitry just beyond his feet. The green grass of floating point had vanished, as though it had never been there at all. "It's like looking into _devnull_ ," he said. There was something wrong about this, but he couldn't seem to think past the swirling, confused thoughts in his mind.

"Wait, no, don't look," Dot said in a panic, cutting through the bizarre feeling. "Don't look _back_!" He looked at her face, but she had turned away, staring off at the Principle Office. "No. No, it's too late," she whispered.

He followed her gaze to where the pinnacle, the small sphere high atop the main white sphere of the Principle Office itself, had opened, letting out a tear. "What's happening?"

"It's going to explode," she said, burying her face in his chest.

Explode? Mainframe was going to _explode_? "I don't think so," he said, his eyes on the bright, static ball. It was growing larger by the picosecond. "I have to get over there and fix it, Dot. Everyone will be deleted if I don't— how do I fix it?"

She shook her head and let go of him. "You can't. This is what happens if I don't win," she said, then pushed him away. She didn't have the strength for it, but Bob was distracted and she fell all at once onto the ground. "There's no other way. It's my fault, Bob... I let him do this to us. You can't fix it."

"I've got to try," he said, and without thinking, took a step away from her.

And she was _gone_.

"Dot? Dot!?" She was _gone_. What had he done? He couldn't process it, he'd lost her, his own fault for moving, for not listening to her, and now she was— for a moment, there was an overlay of a firewall against the panic of her loss, and the tear grew exponentially fast—

Bob found himself down on one knee. He'd dropped the command from numb fingers, but he was silent for almost an entire nano. Glitch sang to him in blips and chirps as he blinked and tried to remind himself of where and when and even _who_ he was.

"I'm okay, Glitch," he said through his shock. "Thanks." Megabyte watched as Bob struggled to recover, a hand on Dot's head, casually keeping her face turned towards him though her eyes were screwed shut, unwilling to look at the guardian.

That had been fake, but the feelings had been real. Watching Mainframe disappearing behind him and then exploding in front of his eyes had been horrifyingly real to him. Losing Dot was fakery, but part of him still ached with her loss, and he looked at her with wide eyes, watching her to remind himself that it hadn't been real.

Megabyte waited, but Bob said nothing, and finally, the virus ran out of patience. "Well, Bob. What did you think?"

She had lived through that. How many times had she seen the system destroyed? It had felt so real... he'd just have to keep reminding himself that it wasn't. Bob's jaw flexed and he picked up the command gingerly, then stood. Megabyte had said that was an inducement to play chess. _Chess_. "I think you're sadistic," he said, glancing away from Dot for just long enough to say the words to Megabyte himself.

Dot nodded and her eyes opened. "Don't give him anything, Bob," said Dot, a quiet and contained anger behind her words. "We won't let him win." Bob nodded at her, cheered a little by the way she comported herself. She didn't seem unsure or afraid, which could only mean one thing: Dot had a plan.

Megabyte let her go and sat down at the table, angling himself so that he could see both of his captive sprites. "Shall we choose our pieces, my love?" Only her eyes moved to focus on the virus, but Bob was taken aback by the sheer force of hatred he could see in them. "Mainframe, of course..." Megabyte placed the black king on the board, then a white one, "and I suppose this would be Megaframe." He turned the piece around in his hand for a moment, then shrugged carelessly. "I can't say I much care for _that_ any longer, but... it's traditional."

"I suppose it is." She glanced over at Bob. "You've got my queen in a firewall."

Megabyte smiled and placed the black queen in front of her. "Yes. I wonder, is his presence more or less disconcerting for you? Of course, _my_ queen has been fragmented." He placed the white queen on the board between them, but his finger rested on the ball of the crown for a nano before he smiled and looked at her with a suggestive look in his half-hooded eyes. "But I think that my queen's identity has been changed."

She shivered.

He waited a moment to see if she would reply, but with none forthcoming, he continued on. "My, Matrix and AndrAIa have grown, haven't they?" He brought out a pair of rooks that he placed on the board, and then his own while Dot shifted uncomfortably. "My own lieutenants aren't anywhere near as meaningful as yours, hm? A few binomes who gladly accepted their viral conditioning... Ah, but here we have Mouse, and her equal partner, Phong. Dark and unpredictable horses in the game, wouldn't you say?"

He handed them to her, and she placed them on the board. "Yours are the doctor and Igor, as I recall."

"I see you remember." He placed his own knights down. "I hope you also remember that focusing your efforts on _them_ is unlikely to allow you a victory, no matter how satisfying it may be."

"I remember," she said grimly. "If I were _you_ , I'd probably do it anyways. Doktor's the only one who really deserves it, though..." He smiled and pulled out the bishops. "Specky and Officer Kay." She extended her hand, but Megabyte pulled the pieces back, keeping them out of her reach.

"That would be true, except that you've given yourself new assets, Dot. We cannot allow young Enzo or your father to remain off the board." A sharp intake of breath and a pursing of her lips was the only response the sprite gave as the virus placed the two pieces down. "Besides, your lead CPU officer was in the armory with me. He's one of my pieces now."

She frowned and looked around the area. "I don't see him," she said, doubtfully. "You haven't had enough time..."

Megabyte flashed her a smile and began placing the pawns on the board.

"Your infection is obvious." She looked at Herr Doktor and Igor as they stood monitoring the monochrome virals. " _Both_ of them." Megabyte shrugged and said nothing, and Dot bit the inside of her cheek. She looked at Bob, the concerned question in her eyes. "He can't hide that, can he?"

"I don't think so," said Bob uneasily, "but I've never heard of a virus getting more powers without an upgrade, either. Megabyte's broken a lot of rules."

"Tell me about it," Dot muttered, looking back at Megabyte on the other side of the board.

"Shall we begin?" asked Megabyte. He didn't wait, taking one of the pawns and moving it up the board in a fairly standard opening move. From his position behind the firewall, Bob could see the chessboard, but the angle was still a bit of a challenge.

"Glitch... chess display. Pawn to e4."

Megabyte threw a smirk at Bob. "You wish to narrate? Very well."

Bob smiled tightly back and tried to concentrate on his connections with his keytool and the command he held. Dot looked at him for a moment, then moved her own. "Pawn to e5... knight to f3. Knight to f6. What are you two playing, mirror chess?" Dot shook her head slightly as Megabyte moved once more. "Pawn to d4... Queen's knight to e4, knight takes pawn."

"Indeed," said Megabyte, and between one frame and the next, they had been transported... elsewhere. They were no longer seated at chessboards or sequestered behind firewalls— instead, they were in a mirrored room with a checkerboard floor, the three of them reflected ad infinitum in ever darkening shades of silvery blue.

A monotone binome sat on the floor between them. It looked dazed.

Dot put a hand to her head for a moment, as if she were in pain. Bob walked to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at the gentle touch, her eyes confused. "Do you know what's going on?" he asked her.

"Yes. It's just like before." She looked over at Megabyte, an expectant grin on his face, then turned to stare at the binome. "I have to delete him," she said quietly.

"Why?" Bob scratched his head. "Is this... some sort of game state?"

"This isn't a game." Dot looked at him in confusion for a moment. "I know you're against deletion," she said hesitantly. "And this isn't even... I don't want to do it, Bob. But if I _don't_..." She looked off to the side and pointed to where Mouse suddenly stood behind one of the mirrors, static and still. Dot swallowed around a lump in her throat. "He'll delete her instead."

Bob's brow furrowed. "So what?" What was she so upset about? Megabyte would delete Mouse? The hacker wasn't one of Megabyte's captives, she was probably either still at whatever temporary accommodations Dot had given her, or out looking for the two of _them_. Maybe she'd even gone off with Ray, since they all thought the danger was over. Megabyte had no way to delete her.

But as Dot looked away, twisting her hands together in nervous anxiety, Bob recalled how he'd felt coming out of the strange Mainframe simulation and realized that this must have felt every bit and byte as consequential to Dot as the other scenario had felt to him. But _he_ knew this was just a simulation: his code must be protecting him. He just had to make sure she knew, and it would be okay. "This isn't _real_ , Dot."

Megabyte frowned and stepped in between Bob and Dot, separating them with his greater bulk. "I suppose it's not unexpected. Guardian code is far more difficult to manipulate than sprite code..." Before Bob could ask what that meant, the virus leaned down. "I see you've made the connection. She cannot tell the difference between _this_ and reality."

"You mean she thinks she's deleting a real person? She thinks you can actually delete Mouse? That really _is_ sadistic."

The virus shrugged as though he didn't care. "You are in this sandbox only at _my_ convenience. If you continue to tell her that this is not real, Bob, I will remove you from it, and she will be here, alone but for _my_ presence. Do you understand?"

Bob scowled. "What's the _point_ of this, Megabyte?"

Megabyte put a heavy hand on Bob's shoulder. The Guardian flinched and stepped away quickly. "Are you ready, my darling?" he asked, his eyes boring into Bob's.

"Not really," she said, her eyes focused on the binome."I don't want to do this. I don't think I can do this."

"You've done it before, Ms Matrix. I suppose you don't want to disappoint Bob? I could delete him, if you'd prefer."

" _No_." She shuddered and walked closer to the binome. She put a hand on the hard rectangular cheek, and shook her head. "This isn't winning, this is losing."

"Small sacrifices must be made for the great good, my dear. You know that." He paused, turned and ran a claw through her hair. The guardian's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps you require my aid." She began to nod reluctantly. "Unless you would prefer... _Bob's_?"

She looked up at Megabyte in alarm. "No, he can't help me— Bob would never—" He laughed, and she looked at Bob, a helpless look in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry, Bob. I can't lose to him. You know what he'd do to Mainframe. I can't let him. I have to fight, no matter what." She shook her head and Megabyte touched her arm with one of his claws, gently opening a slit in her skin. Energy oozed from the wound until he reached her hand, and her nails lengthened into sharp, red knives.

She glanced at Bob once more, who looked at the situation with much more confusion than horror... at least, until she raised her hand and struck her new fingernails through the binome's eye. She shook a little as she did it. Energy spurted out, covering Dot's hand, and she looked over at Bob, nauseous and guilty. Bob stared, his mouth dropping open.

Megabyte's arm encircled her as he took her hand and yanked her out of the monochrome viral. His satisfied eyes met Bob's shocked ones. "Yes, my love, just like that."

Dot let out a devestated sounding sob, and Bob ran at them, entirely ready to hit Megabyte, even if it did mean getting booted out of this sandbox command of his, but before he reached them, he found himself back in the firewall. He had no forward momentum, but his body was still processing his brain's commands as though he'd really been in that strange space.

He slammed his shoulder into the firewall. It burned, and as he grit his teeth against pain he hadn't felt since the Web, Glitch started giving him unhelpful technical information about why exactly it was a bad idea to throw oneself against such a defense. "I _know_ that, Glitch. Give me something I can _use._ "

"Now, Bob, I'd think you'd be pleased to see how your research plays out," said Megabyte, moving not a single iota, his focus unchangingly on Dot. The woman before him squeezed her hands together, her eyes on the chessboard, shaking slightly. "Surely you didn't think that reformatting would be a pleasant process."

Bob sputtered momentarily. "Fine, I get your point. Deletion is better than a cure. Now leave her alone!"

"Now, now, Bob. You're overreacting." He smiled mildly at the guardian. "It's only a game of chess. Isn't that right, Dot? Incidentally..." He reached out and moved a piece. "King's bishop to d3."

Dot steadied herself with a deep breath and looked over at the Guardian. "Bob, I..." She shook her head and her lower lip quavered for the briefest fraction of a nano. "I can't forfeit. I have to win. I have to try to win."

Bob rubbed his arm and stared at the chessboard. "Dot, there's no win here. Don't take any more pieces. Don't make any more moves."

She looked at him for a moment more then shook her head before she looked back at the chessboard. "But... Bob, if I don't—"

"We'll figure this out together, Dot," said Bob, trying to be encouraging. "Don't we always figure it out together? Trust me." Dot twisted her hands together and looked between Bob and the board.

Megabyte sighed, stood and blocked her view of the guardian. "My dear, how many games of chess have we played?"

"Too many." Dot stood and tried to get Bob back into her sights, but Megabyte simply adjusted his position between the pair. "I've got him to help me this time. I don't have to do this."

"I could delete my rival for your affections right now, Dot." Her protest was swift and panicked, but Megabyte shushed her and talked over it. "Bob may not thank you for all that you have done for the system or for him, but he will still _exist_. Is that so dissimilar to the deal we made so long ago?" She was quiet for a long time, and Bob could only imagine the nod she was giving to the virus.

"Dot, you don't need a deal with him. Just get this firewall down, and I'll deal with him."

Megabyte laughed in response. "Come now, Ms Matrix, how successful have his plans been before? Do you truly believe he can help you?" She remained quiet. "Do you think I haven't made my own plans well enough to withstand such an action?"

Bob heard her give a defeated sigh and he shook his head in frustration. "Dot, don't listen to him! He's—"

"I'm not going to let him delete you, Bob," she said in a soft voice that was nonetheless powerful. "Megabyte, I don't want to play your sick game, so let's—"

"My dear, you are playing for Bob's life."

"And how are you going to take it, exactly? If you drop the firewall, he and Glitch will take you out. You can't—"

There was a sudden and strange flash of darkness and Bob shook his head to clear it. The firewall! It was down! He had to take advantage! "Glitch, power RAM," he called out as he ran towards Megabyte... but the keytool did nothing and Bob found himself with his arms pinned in the virus's powerful grasp.

Dot gasped as one of Megabyte's cruel tentacles wrapped itself around Bob's neck. She ran to them, pulling at the virus while Bob's eyes bulged. He felt lightheaded, Dot's panicked voice begging for his life a singular datapoint in his ear until he was thrown back into his cage, the firewall rising around him while he lay there, panting in its confining red glare.

Glitch was beeping and clicking at him, the keytool's equivalent to screaming until Bob sat up and patted his friend in a comforting gesture. "Yeah? Well it sure _felt_ real," he muttered, still a bit breathless. He cast his eyes around. "Dot?"

She looked over at him from where she sat once more at the chessboard. "I'm not going to let him delete you," she said quietly, but her mask had slipped. Where her previous tone had been defiant, she now sounded frightened. "I _have_ to win this game, Bob. Please don't argue with me."

"Dot—"

"Pawn to d5."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo. I'm terrible at chess, but Dot and Megabyte are good at it. Here's what they just played: https://www.365chess.com/eco/C43_Petrov_modern_attack_Symmetrical_variation
> 
> They're actually playing a particular game from some grandmasters, and it's two moves on from there. I'll link to that with a commentary from people who actually play chess well in the next chapter so as not to spoil who wins. Probably no one cares about it, but it's a really elegant chess game, and since I'm copying it move for move, I feel like I've got to give the reference.


	8. Heap Corruption

"Pawn to d5," Dot said.

Megabyte nodded and contemplated the board for only a moment. "King's knight to e5."

They were there again, in that strange mirrored room, but this time, a cowering, uninfected zero binome sat in the center of the room, a child process in her arms. Dot winced, and Megabyte let his claws extend, one by one.

"Wait," she said, and Megabyte paused, watching her through his claws.

She walked over to the woman and took the baby, a guardian doll falling out of the child's hands. "I'll keep her safe, Mrs Avery," said Dot quietly, then moved to the side.

"No, please! You have to help me!" said the binome mother imploringly to Dot as Megabyte advanced.

Bob shook his head, anger surging through his entire body, and stepped in between them. "What kind of sick game is this?" he asked, but suddenly Dot was at his side, holding onto his arm. "Dot...?"

"I can't lose you, Bob. I _can't_." The baby was crying in her arms, and there were tears in her eyes, too. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to figure out what to say. The binome behind him wasn't real, but if Dot felt that it was, it meant she was _abandoning_ the zero to her fate. How could he stand by and let Dot do that? " _Please_ , Bob. You don't have Glitch here. He'll eviscerate you."

"But Dot—" he protested.

" _Please_. I have to win. I have to keep you safe. Help me. Help me and little Peeda." There were still tears in her eyes. Tears! From Dot Matrix, who never cried if someone could see her. He could count the number of times he'd seen her crying on one hand! He stared between her and the binome— Mrs Avery— with concern, but... This wasn't real; even if Dot didn't know it, _he_ did. And he couldn't save a sim, right? He relented, picking up the child's toy before he pulled her into his arms, her and the child both, protecting them from the virus who stalked behind her. The virus who smiled maliciously at him. The virus who extended his long, sharp claws as the binome behind him continued to implore them to protect her.

He rubbed what he hoped were comforting circles into her back as the screams started. He comforted _himself_ with the knowledge that the cries were only simulation. The virus really did seem to _enjoy_ what he was doing, claws finding where they would maximize pain and minimize actual damage, extending the torture for as long as he could.

Dot buried her face into his chest, her shoulders shaking silently. Screams from both mother and child comingled in haunting, pain-filled music. Bob had to turn his own face away from the scene as the spherical body was bent and broken and twisted. Eventually, the loud cries died down to whimpers.

Megabyte turned to look at them, his eyes travelling up and down to take the postures in. His claws dripped with energy and he walked over to them, raising a claw to trace the dying binome's energy through Dot's hair. "You could sacrifice him, my dear," he said. Bob raised his eyes to the virus, unable to keep his anger out of them as Megabyte spoke softly to Dot, as if to a lover. "You would be done with this pain."

And in his arms, Dot shook her head. "She was only a pawn," said the sprite, her voice filled with tears and her shoulders shaking. "Bob is— I can't lose him again. I can't lose my queen."

A deep sense of alarm tore through Bob at her words, but they were already back in the real world, him behind the firewall and her with only a small table separating sprite from virus. Her hands were shaking.

"Wasn't that pleasant?" asked Megabyte, tilting his head.

Bob swore under his breath, and Dot looked at the virus with a baleful expression. "I'm not going to let you delete Bob," she said, her voice deathly serious. "He's—" she frowned and cut herself off.

Megabyte leaned closer to her. " _Yours_?" He gave her a knowing smile and she shifted uncomfortably, moving another piece instead of responding. "Queen's knight to d7?" Megabyte smiled and looked over at Bob. "An interesting move. I _do_ think his presence is distracting you, Dot. I could take Phong out next, but we are playing for something rather different... King's knight to f7. Another pawn..."

Once again, they were there in that strange space. It felt like the mirrors were trying to close in on them. He walked over to her immediately this time as Megabyte moved his jaw around, staring with delight at the binome: Specky this time.

Dot whimpered. Bob put his arms around her and blocked her view once more. "I'm not a chess piece, Dot," he murmured into her ear.

"No, I know... But I have to stop him," she said quietly. "If I don't win, he'll do this to everyone. I _have_ to win, and I can't—" The screams started up behind him and she shuddered. "Don't you see, Bob? He's always been right. I can't win if I don't do what he does. I have to accept these smaller losses. And I... I'm going to have to sacrifice some bigger pieces, or..." Bob shook his head. "I can't do this anymore, Bob. I _can't_. If you're going to do something, you have to do it now." He tightened his arms around her.

This was real to her. Even if it weren't... Bob _knew_ it wasn't real, and it was still affecting him. He knew Specky. He'd been to office parties with him, been given commands and encryptions by him, Bob had even repaired the binome's glasses once or twice. The screams and cries for help _felt_ real, even knowing with certainty that they weren't.

And Dot didn't even have _that_.

"I don't know what to do," he admitted.

She looked up at him, her face suddenly resigned. "Then you have to accept my plan, no matter what," she said in a whisper. "I'm going to save you."

He shook his head. He was willing to be deleted if it came down to it. She had to save _herself_. "Dot—"

Even more quickly than the last time, they were thrown out of the space. Dot's eyes were closed, while Megabyte's had a half-lidded luxurious sort of satiation deep within them. "The pawns are always so very random," he commented, his deep voice so calm and centered that no one could have guessed he'd been virtually murdering a binome in as messy a way as he could.

"You're _sick_ ," said Bob, checking on Glitch. _Processing_. Still processing.

Megabyte smiled at him. "So you've said. But I think that I'm the one who's well. I suppose it's all a matter of perspective. Speaking of which..." He looked over at his scientist. "Herr Doktor, I think Bob is having difficulty enjoying this process. See if you can increase the rate of distortion."

"Ja, Mein Grossenbeiter!"

Bob glanced at the doctor for a moment as he began twisting and turning dials on the console, but Megabyte had turned his attention away. "Now then..." He turned back to Dot, and his words brought Bob's attention back to the pair. "Will you accept the sacrifice?"

Dot eyes opened and she stared at the board, obviously running forward through moves in her mind. Bob looked at the board himself. He disliked chess: the game required far too much planning. He'd learned the rules, as he'd learned the rules for just about every game out there, but he'd have happily left the game to a player like Dot under normal circumstances. He tried to follow the strategy out a bit. She could take Megabyte's knight with her king, but then... then what would he do...? well, it would leave her open to a check immediately from her opponent's queen. She'd be forced to move the king, and then... he'd move his queen, and eventually take her knight? Bob squinted.

"I'm not willing to make that sacrifice," said Dot.

"Then I do believe that I have two of your most important pieces in danger."

She nodded slowly. "My queen and king's rook."

"Indeed." Megabyte's smile widened. "Bob or Matrix... you'll have to give one of them up," he said. "Which one will it be...?" He tilted his head. "Moving your rook would be a pointless move, wouldn't it? It would gain you nothing."

"But if I don't, you'll tear my brother to pieces." Her eyes were unfocused.

"I think I shall relish the opportunity. Your brother has been quite the thorn in my side." He paused at her indecision. "Of course, if you allow me to destroy _Bob_ , I think we can move on."

She stared at the board, unmoving while Bob continued to think about the way the board was set up. It wasn't ideal. Bob was no chess master, but he thought it was recoverable. On the other hand, after seeing what losing pawns had done to her, he wasn't at all eager to watch her lose one of her... _major pieces_. A piece representing him, or a piece representing Matrix. Part of Bob hoped that it was him. Megabyte wouldn't kill the _real_ Bob, and killing a simulation while the real thing held Dot safe might actually help her to see the situation for what it was.

Unfortunately for him, her hand reached out, and with an air of uncertainty, she picked up the queen and moved it.

"Queen to e7, for the galleries." Megabyte nodded approvingly. "Protecting Bob _is_ the stronger move, my dear," he said comfortingly. She looked up at him, a sickness in her expression, and Megabyte smiled in anticipation. "Knight takes _rook_."

And suddenly, they were _there_ again, the checkerboard floor under their feet. Bob shook his head, suddenly confused. Glitch was... where was Glitch? How had he gotten here?

"Sis? Bob?" Matrix was in the center of the room, on his knees without a weapon. How had Matrix...? Bob shook his head again, trying to clear the feeling of wrongness that was permeating the area and distracting him from seeing what was here in the moment. Matrix's arms were bound behind him; less clear from Bob's direct vantage point was that the renegade's legs were bolted to the ground, though the mirrors showed the metal shackles well enough.

Dot stood between Matrix and Megabyte, her eyes on her brother. "I need to say goodbye," she whispered and threw her arms around the larger sprite. Megabyte watched Dot with interest, paying no heed to the guardian.

Bob shook his head against the pounding in his temples one last time, trying to clear his mind. He and Matrix could take down the virus. Matrix had almost managed it singlehandedly once. Even with his legs bolted to the ground, Bob would bet on the renegade— just had to give him a micrometer!

This! This was finally something he could do. "Dot, I'll hold him off, you get Matrix free!" Bob said as he rushed at Megabyte. The virus was laughing slightly. Without Glitch, he certainly held the advantage, but Bob punched him in the gut. It was enough to refocus those glittering eyes on the guardian, and Bob led Megabyte on a chase around the small room, the virus laughing as the guardian barely stayed ahead of golden claws that raked against the mirrored walls, sounds like screeching nulls filling the area.

He twisted and turned, and then... a choking sound, somehow louder than anything he'd ever heard. Megabyte and Bob both stopped, a great smile on the virus' face while Bob stared, shaking his head in denial.

Dot's fingernails were claws again, embedded into Matrix's heart. The room was as silent as devnull itself. "I'm sorry," she whispered into that cruel, dead air. "I just can't watch him do it again. Not to you. Not to my brother." She kissed Matrix's cheek, wiped tears from her own. Her fingernails retracted. "It's better this way," she said regretfully.

As the scene dissolved around them, Bob fell to his knees, then sat down. He felt drained of all his energy as the firewall appeared again. The command fell from his hand and he breathed shallowly. She'd deleted Matrix. She'd deleted her own brother! "Glitch?" The keytool clicked reassuringly. _Not-real_. A corner of Megabyte's mouth rose as he watched the guardian's reactions.

For her part, Dot stared at the chessboard without any sign of emotion, as though she'd numbed herself through her actions. "Knight to h8," said Dot, her voice mechanical, and the virus looked back at her. "Check."

"King to d2."

She hesitated again, a hand hovering over a piece for a nano, but after a moment, it was as if a switch had been flipped in her head. She quickly and decisively made her move. "Knight to d1. Knight takes queen."

"Well played. _Aggressive_. But one moment." Megabyte held up a finger. "Are you sitting this one out, Bob?"

"Watching her deleting Hex doesn't sound appealing," muttered Bob, still staring at Dot in complete and utter shock.

"You wouldn't have to see this if you'd fragmented us," she replied, a tinge of acid remaining in her otherwise deadened voice.

Megabyte stood and walked over to the firewall, pacing around it with an awful _clank, clank, clank_. "I think he has betrayed you once again, my dear. He will never forgive you for terminating your own brother, no matter your compassionate reasoning. He will never be able to trust you again." One of his claws raked down against the barrier between him and the guardian, the sound of nulls screaming now in the real world, and Bob winced at the earsplitting noise. "If he _ever_ loved you, that is over now. I am all that you have left."

Bob wanted to curl up and erase himself. His heart felt broken. Her eyes were on him now, and he could see hurt warring with a cold despair behind a mask of indifference that was far more transparent than she probably thought it was. He wanted to comfort her, but how could he? He couldn't comfort himself. This was a stranger in Dot's skin that could murder her brother and go back to playing chess as though nothing had happened.

Although... it was a stranger that had just told him he should have fragmented her. One that had wished harm on herself because of this chess game. A broken stranger in the midst of mental torture, fracturing under viral pressure. Perhaps this was still the woman he loved, pushed past her limits, by a virus _he'd_ failed to stop.

Well, was he a guardian or not? If she was a broken stranger, she deserved his protection. And if she was still the woman he loved, he needed to help her return to herself. He had to be strong for her sake. No matter how difficult it was, he was going to be there for her!

He picked up the command and stood. He looked back into her eyes now, hoping that his determination would see them both through this trial. There was a promise in his eyes, that she would not be abandoned, not by his choice. He waited to see the despair ebb, then turned to face Megabyte. "We're not done," he said angrily.

The virus stared at him with dissatisfaction, then his eyes darted over to Dot. "Herr Doktor, I believe Dot was taking my queen."

The three of them were once again in the strange mirrored location.

A copy of Dot was crumpled on the floor, flowers all around her, dressed all in white, one of Hex's masks on her face. The real Dot raised a hand to her forehead again, then looked at her copy on the floor with a sort of resigned horror.

She looked over at Megabyte. "I have to delete myself?"

"Not quite." Megabyte studied his claws for a moment while Dot stared at her doppleganger in confusion. "If you need help, my love, _ask_."

She swallowed and looked at Bob. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do," she whispered.

Bob nodded and focused on the scene around the rapidly building headache. "I think... It's Hex. She must be working with him. She's worn a costume before. But... I..." He didn't know what to do either. Something inside him was telling him that this wasn't real, but if this wasn't real, what was? He reached out his hand and took hers, and set his jaw. "We can't keep playing his game, Dot. I won't let you sacrifice anyone else."

Megabyte shrugged. "I could delete Bob, if you'd prefer."

Dot pulled her hand out of his and stepped forward. "What am I supposed to do?" Her voice was quiet but anguished, and her eyes focused only on the woman in the bridal dress.

Megabyte walked forward and picked up the woman on the floor, then beckoned Dot over with a crooked claw. "You needn't destroy yourself," he said quietly. "Merge with her."

"What?" Bob grit his teeth, placing himself between them as Dot took a step back in shock. "No. Hex, stop this!" Why was the chaotic virus playing Megabyte's game? Maybe it wasn't even Hex! He wasn't going to let this happen. Dot was _not_ going to merge with a virus, not on _his_ watch, not even if he had to do something against his own principles. He'd do it if he had to. He'd— he'd even— for _Dot_. "I'll delete that— I'll delete Hex myself!" Dot looked at him with shake of her head and a horrified expression, but Megabyte dropped the... the _whatever-it-was_ and picked up Bob.

"I did warn you," he said, then threw the guardian into a mirror.

The firewall rose up around him again, but he could see Dot and Megabyte were still silent at the chessboard. "What just—" Hex was— _Dot_ was— Glitch beeped. _Not-real_. Not _real_! Bob tried to pull himself together. "What's he doing in there?" he demanded.

The doctor looked over at him and smiled. "Mein Grossenbeiter is improving Fraulein Matrix! You must be patient and allow the process to complete."

" _Complete_ my ASCII—" Bob glared at the binome, but Glitch beeped.

The news wasn't great. Glitch had managed to get through the command, but had only managed to penetrate tendrils of code into the little room of mirrors. Perhaps Glitch's presence had been the source of the headache and the feeling that things weren't quite right. Bob sat down and rubbed his forehead. "Can you get to Dot?" he asked, quietly. "Maybe get her to see that it's not real?"

The keytool beeped in answer and went back to its processing mode, just as Dot and Megabyte looked up.

"Wasn't that _enlightening_ , my dear? Rook to e1."

"Sure. Enlightening. Can we take a break?" Dot sniffed and rubbed her eyes.

Megabyte raised his eyebrow with a smirk, then looked away. "Herr Doktor, current status?"

"The data scrub is at 64%. I was able to borrow processing from Fraulein Matrix's command to complete your request. The Guardian's command distortion is now at 125%. But, Mein Grossenbeiter, there is some... chatter on the channels you wanted monitored." The virus frowned and walked over to the scientist, speaking in a quiet voice that Bob couldn't quite discern.

He looked over at Dot, lips pursing. "Dot?" he called softly. "What happened in there?" She blinked slowly and shrugged. "Are you okay?" She looked down and shook her head. Bob ran his fingers through his hair and looked again for a way out of his cage, but he could see no weaknesses in Megabyte's trap. He paced the small area, but nothing revealed itself.

Even when they started playing again, he continued to walk, two steps in each direction before he had to turn around again. "Knight to f2, takes pawn," came Dot's voice from across the room.Bob was not pulled into the simulation with the command, but Dot and Megabyte were silent again. Glitch beeped.

Bob let out a puff of breath as he read the information that Glitch was trying to get to him. This made some sense. The keytool could only get through while the command was active, and it had been trying to strengthen _Bob's_ code against it. Glitch could have been making a lot more progress if Bob had managed to get Megabyte to throw him out earlier.

All right, then. He needed to make use of the time he had. "He's trying to rewire her," he said to himself. "He probably made her take that viral representation into her... But what does that mean? Can any of what's happening in there _be_ real?"

The keytool beeped and spun around in answer to the question Bob had posed. There were definitely changes happening. Glitch was detecting a 2% change in her code since this ordeal had started. Small, but significant corruption. He had to find a way to get her out.

As the pair exited the command, Megabyte smiled. "My darling, they're infected. You hardly need to worry about their wellbeing."

Dot took a deep breath. "I'm not like you. I can't just stop caring about them because they're not mine."

"Indeed? You'd do well to stop caring about any of them. You're willing to kill them out of compassion, but do you think any of them would thank you for it? Do you think _Bob_ would thank you? Would _Matrix_?"

"No," she said softly. "But it doesn't matter. I can't stop caring."

Megabyte smiled at her. "If you would like assistance with that, I could be convinced to help." She shuddered and shook her head. Megabyte shrugged. "As you wish. Bishop to h7. I'll take _your_ pawn now, my darling."

She winced and her eyes closed. This likely wouldn't take very long. If she decided to kill the binome herself, it wouldn't be long at all. Of course, if Megabyte was trying to hurt her so much that she asked for his help... Bob looked at Glitch, watching a progress bar counting up. It finished just as the pair returned to reality.

Dot raised a hand to her forehead in pain. She looked a bit confused, but her eyes caught on Bob's face and the guardian gave her a half smile. _Trust me_ , he mouthed at her. She looked at the board once again, then back at him. She tried to smile back at him, but it didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Knight to e4," she said.

Megabyte tilted his head. "Protecting Bob again?" Dot pursed her lips. "A poor choice, Dot."

She stared at the virus for a moment more, then smirked, her eyes hardening. "Is it? Maybe you're just not the strategist you think you are," she said.

A low rumbling in the back of his throat sounded for a moment, then he narrowed his eyes at her. "Rook to e4."

There was more silence. Bob wished he could be there with her. This would take longer, and it would be harder on Dot. The knight was Mouse. She'd been the one to send the virus off into the web when he'd tried to escape. Virtual or not, he would certainly destroy her slowly... unless Dot destroyed the simulation of Mouse, which Dot had already proved she was willing to do even when she thought it was _real_ and hopefully she had some idea now that it wasn't, and... Bob shook his head and Glitch beeped anxiously. He couldn't— _wouldn't_ think about that. Not right now.

"Glitch, can you get to that binome at the console?" Glitch turned a few times, the keytool's equivalent of a no. Igor turned to him, the strange middle-section eye blinking slowly at him. Bob lowered his voice. "Can you blow that space out? Destroy it, or..." A whirring sound. It would destroy _Dot_ if he did that, and would he like to confirm? "No, of _course_ not."

They'd returned to the real world, and Dot put her head in her hands, clearly struggling to calm herself for a few nanos while Megabyte tapped his fingers on the table. Dot looked up at Bob, her face pale and drawn, a cry for help in her eyes, but all Bob could do was clench his fists. She turned back to the board in disappointment. "Pawn to e4," said Dot, and the silence was palpable.

He needed to get out of this. He _needed_ to rescue her! "You're sure she can tell the difference now?" he asked the keytool. It beeped again, and he scowled. How was he supposed to deal with this? He hit his hand against the firewall again, and a burning heat blossomed through his fist as Dot's eyes cleared fully for the first time since she'd sat down in front of that board. She gasped and looked at Bob's hand. "Bob! You're hurt!" She stood and took a step towards the firewall.

Megabyte smiled. "Bishop to g6. Check."

She stopped and turned. " _Check_? But I..." She swallowed and took another step away from the table, backwards this time. "King to d8."

"Distance will not relieve you of the consequences. You remember what will happen if you lose, don't you, my dear?"

She shivered and walked to Bob's cage. She was only a breath away from Bob, but the distance between them through the firewall was insurmountable. "I remember," she said, pulling her shoulders in on themselves. Her eyes stared into Bob's for a moment, and then she glanced meaningfully at the monochrome binome at the console. Was it some kind of signal? Bob tried to ready himself as Megabyte casually reached across the table to move another piece.

"Knight to f7." He smiled. " _Check_. Now, Dot. I don't think you're paying attention."

She crossed her arms and smiled, without looking back at him. There was a sort of victory in her eyes, a grim satisfaction to the tilt of her mouth. "King to e8."

"Knight to d6, check." He looked at the board, then frowned. "It would seem we have reached an impasse." 

"Yes. Which means you don't win, and Bob is free."

Megabyte laughed quietly for a moment. "I do believe you've misunderstood, my dear." He stood and walked over to her. She walked backwards until he took one of her arms in his hand and squeezed it hard enough that the green sprite gasped in pain. Her other hand dropped, and she touched the monochrome binome at the command console. "Is it ready, Herr Doktor?"

"Not yet, Mein Grossenbeiter. It is only at 82%."

"Set it up for transport." He turned back to Bob. "I apologize, Bob. I had wished you to see the fruits of your labours, but I'm afraid I don't see how I can bring you with us. Perhaps when I have succeeded, I will send her back here."

"Send her _back_?" Bob asked in alarm. "Where are you taking her?"

The virus took a moment to sneer at him. "My time in the Web was most fruitful, Bob."

The Web!? "She'll degrade— you'll _both_ degrade!" If only Glitch had managed to get a call out earlier! If only he had managed to convince Megabyte to let her free! If only she were actress enough to make Megabyte think she was viral... _User_ , if only the firewall would go down—

As if in answer to his prayer, the binome at the console pressed a button.

Everything happened all at once. The firewall went down, leaving Bob free, and he quickly moved out of the circle of his former cage. Megabyte looked at Dot for a fraction of a pico, then wrenched her by her arm, sending her crashing into the chessboard. The virus rushed Bob, slamming him and the burns running over one side of his body into the wall.

Megabyte grinned at him. "It seems she is more afraid of the web than your destruction!"

Bob didn't have time to think about it. "Power RAM!" This time, a beam of energy emanated from his keytool, and Bob sent Megabyte backwards with his own blast of Glitch's power. He didn't have time to look at what Dot was doing, beyond trying to ensure that the fight didn't get close to her.

"You're nothing to her but a tool!"

Bob ignored the virus. "Containment beam," he called, and Glitch sent a lasso of energy at the virus. Megabyte broke it quickly, advancing on Bob with his claws extended, slashing at the Guardian who danced backwards out of his way.

"Nothing but a distraction to be used against _me_." He pressed Bob into the wall, choosing strangulation instead of his claws as his method of execution, but Bob lifted Glitch up and pointed his keytool at the container the doctor had been so busy with earlier, sending it smashing into Megabyte with enough force to cause the virus to swat at it, letting Bob slip from his grasp.

He could see Dot kicking the doctor and his assistant away from her, but he was too busy to offer her any aid. "Energy shield," he called, a glowing golden barrier unfolding between him and the virus just in time as the monster's claws threw him all the way through the floating binome's prison. He sputtered as the liquid poured around him, but Megabyte wasn't done yet, pressing him through the broken glass and into the wall, where the shards dug deep into his body.

Dot reached out and pressed a button on the wall, and a klaxon went off throughout the building. Bob could see one of the monochrome infected reaching for her, but with Megabyte's fists bashing at his defenses, he could barely spare the breath to call her name out.

He needed to get the upper hand back. "Cache lock," he called, and a stronger containment beam surrounded Megabyte's torso, forcing him backwards and giving the guardian just enough time to catch his breath. Still, it wasn't strong enough. The virus flexed his arms and the lock broke. He gave Bob a toothy smile, then ran at him. Bob dodged, the virus turned to make another run, but paused with one foot in the air, his head tilting as if he'd heard something.

His smile widened as Bob ran at him with Glitch's power backing his punch. The virus caught Bob up as if in an embrace. "I have my victory," he whispered in Bob's ear, "and you will _never_ recover." In response, Bob smashed a hand encased in golden energy against the virus' cheek until he was released, dropping down and darting away from his grasp.

"Breach!"

The door burst open, Matrix the first through, but before the renegade could make a single attack, a firewall went up around Megabyte. "Ah! I miss all the action!" complained Matrix.

Bob turned to the console with relief, expecting to see Dot, but saw instead the binome that had been in the container. Only... she wasn't quite monochrome anymore. Bob didn't move, didn't take a breath, his eyes fixed on the one that had turned to look at Dot with an attentive, loving expression. She was still white, like one of the ones Megabyte had infected, but she had strange green bands circling arms and legs.

Her icon was the same purple as Dot's eyes.

The binome was infected. The signs were all there. She headed towards Dot with a strange smile on her face until the green sprite took a step back and the one's face fell.

"Bob! Dot! Are you all right?" AndrAIa had entered the room behind Matrix, who was now busily rounding up the virals, including the one that was...

Bob swallowed and turned to Dot. The woman was staring in shock at the viral binome. Had she put it together? Did she understand what she'd done? Part of him hoped she hadn't, but Dot was too smart, and Megabyte's ideas had been in her head for too long.

This was a disaster. "It's going to be okay," he said, trying to suppress the note of panic in his voice as he turned to face her. He reached out for her hand, but she pulled away more quickly than he'd have imagined possible, and that damnable command mask came down over her features. "Dot—"

"AndrAIa, can you and Matrix handle things here?"

"Oh! Well, sure, Dot," the game sprite smiled. "We've got lots of experience with viral cleanup. We can report back to you when we're done...?"

"Good. Thank you. Bob, I need to go talk to Phong. Can you see if Mouse is still in the system and have her take care of these new data zombies before they drain more of the system?" She didn't even wait for him to say a word before leaving him behind, a retinue of binomes trailing after her as she took control of the situation.

Bob was left feeling lost. And tired. And overlooked.

He righted the chessboard. He looked for the pieces scattered about the room, placing them on the board one by one in their expected places. He couldn't find the queens, but the rest were all there. He grabbed a chair from the ground and sat down. His eyes glazed over as he looked at the board.

 _Chess_.

He'd never liked the game. He glanced over at Megabyte. The virus was already looking at how to get himself free. Talking to Matrix. No insinuations with "the boy," just plain speech, hatred and anger spewing about like they were normal. They _were_ normal for a virus.

A virus like Dot.

He closed his eyes, and he felt it coming on him like a wave: a deep, dark, all-encompassing anger that he'd never felt before. If he'd done what the other guardians had wanted him to do, if he'd _deleted_ Megabyte, if he'd deleted _Gigabyte_ , this would never have happened. If he'd listened to Dixon, to any of them, this wouldn't have happened. If he'd listened to Dot instead of to Megabyte, the virus would never have been in the position of getting himself free. She wouldn't have been... corrupted. It was his fault. _His fault_.

In the minutes and hours that came after, he wouldn't remember everything from that moment. Certainly, he would never be able to recapture his reasoning. Of the actions he took, only flashes would remain committed to the database in his mind.

He would always remember his hands wrapping themselves around the chessboard, the sharp edges cutting into the already tight, burned skin of his right hand. He would remember the sound of the chair toppling to the ground as he stood, somehow loud despite the overall chaos of activity in the small office. He would also remember the scent of plastic and wood burning as he threw the board and all of its pieces at the firewall. He would remember the tiny _pops_ , and the greater _roar_ as the energy destroyed it all.

He would never remember the specifics of the profanities he screamed in the modular speech of modem, or what the virus warbled back in reply, but until the second he died, he _knew_ he would remember the way that the virus seemed to bask in his self-destructive anger like a null in an energy runoff.

He would certainly remember the scent of his skin burning as he threw himself at Megabyte, fully intent on deleting the virus— or letting the virus delete him.

He would also remember the sharp, unexpected pain at his wrist as Glitch grabbed him tightly and turned itself into a retractable rope to pull him out of the situation before he could erase himself against the burning force field.

When his processor resumed its normal flow, Bob collapsed against a wall, breath coming in great, gasping sobs. There was an eerie silence until Matrix followed him out and the world seemed to normalize.

"Hey, just breathe," said Matrix, the renegade putting a hand on Bob's uninjured shoulder. He looked at the guardian critically, eyes lingering on the burns and scrapes. "He must have done a number on you, huh...?" Bob said nothing. "Do you want to talk about it? Or something?" The strangest, most uncomfortable expression was on Matrix's face. It turned to something that was between relief and guilt as Bob's head shook. "Look, AndrAIa and I can handle things here. You should go see a diagnostic."

Bob looked at his injuries. He barely felt them. They didn't really matter anyways, what mattered was his home and his family. His destroyed family. His corrupted family. What did he have left?

"Maybe talk to Phong, or Dot, or... Turbo?"

He looked at the great green sprite in front of him. Matrix. Matrix and AndrAIa and Mainframe. That was something he had left. He had to protect it. "Not Turbo. Never Turbo. Matrix, this is really important: don't tell the Collective what happened," he said. "No matter what happens next, you can't let them find out what happened here."

"What?" Matrix looked at him, confusion evident on his face. "Why? I'm sure he's not the first virus to get out of containment."

The guardian screwed his face up for a moment before he replied. "He corrupted Dot," said Bob slowly. If they found out, the fate of Mainframe would be on him, too. And he couldn't ignore that it had been working on _him_ , too. On a Guardian. The Collective would destroy more than one system to stop a supervirus, and if Megabyte could reproduce his work, then... then that's what he was. Even if it was artificial.

" _Corrupted?_ Corrupted how? My sister seemed fine when she left." The renegade suddenly looked worried. "What do you want me to do? I— Bob, she looked fine!"

"I know," said Bob. His emotions had run through him. He felt shattered. "I don't want you to do anything, Matrix. I'm going to go find her." He looked at at the man in front of him, a part of him marveling at how the expression he wore now looked just like the one he'd had as a boy when he'd stuck Dot with a magnet. The other part was full of anger on behalf of the renegade: Matrix didn't know she'd been willing to murder him. If Bob had his way, the man in front of him, the boy who'd grown up too fast and too alone, would never know.

This had all happened on his watch. Bob might as well have given permission. Well. It wasn't going to happen again.

"It's going to be okay," said Bob. "That's a promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, the chess game is here: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1067374  
> Or, if you'd prefer a version with some commentary, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxcaRe53vsQ
> 
> Hope you liked this chapter!


	9. Empty Trash

He found her in floating point, as far from the Principle Office as she could get. Behind her, the Data C gently rocked against the low grey walls that separated the city from the water. She wore no commander's mask here: she looked as exhausted as he felt, maybe more, sitting on a bench, just staring out at the rest of the system with a faraway look in her eyes.

"Hey, Dot," he said cautiously, sitting down beside her.

She looked at him briefly. "Hey, Bob. You look worse than when I left. Did he get out again?" She looked at the Principle Office in the distance with a shiver. He followed her gaze unhappily, his brain helpfully giving him an overlay of a giant tear ready to destroy the whole city. _That_ was going to take a while to go away, wasn't it...

He shook his head. "No. He's contained." He leaned back, trying to make himself comfortable, but he found that comfort was not an easy thing to find as he aggravated the burns. "I thought I was going to find you with Phong, but he said you didn't go to the war room." She raised an eyebrow momentarily as she glanced at him. "Are you okay, Dot?"

She let out a breath. "I... might be having some trouble," she admitted quietly. "I can't seem to— Matrix is okay. Is Mouse? Am I? How much of that was real, Bob?"

"Mouse is fine. Everyone's..." Bob frowned. Everyone was definitely not _okay_. "As for if it was real, I think we can say it was mostly a dream."

She was quiet for a while, looking out into nothing while she processed the statement. "You're pretty burned for a dream. Maybe it was more like a nightmare."

"Yeah." Bob looked out at the system. His system. _Their_ system. _They_ were supposed to be the sprites who guided it. The guardian and the Command.Com were supposed to be the ones who led it through troubles, protected it... and here they sat, having failed to even protect each other.

Around them, the peace of the day belied what had happened. Birds twittered around the parse trees. Binomes were walking with their children, although the pair of sprites were getting a much wider berth than usual. All in all, it was a really nice day.

A nice day, except for the static sound of tears that went unmended and unlocated around them. A nice day if you ignored the evidence of damage in the system. A nice day if you ignored Bob's burns, or the haunted look in Dot's eyes.

Yes. It was a nice day if you could ignore the damage Megabyte had caused.

It felt as though his thoughts were darkening everything around him.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It takes more than a virus to break me." She looked at the burns a bit skeptically, so he added, "Glitch can handle minor repairs. It's already working on it. It just takes some time." She nodded, and looked away. Her shoulders hunched together, as if she were trying to make herself smaller.

He reached out to her, but paused as he got a closer look at her. The white queen from Megabyte's game was hiding in her hand, just visible outside of her closed fist. She was lifting the black one in front of her face. He pulled himself back, suddenly angry, and a silence took hold between them, uncomfortable against the backdrop of the sunny day. What in the net was she keeping those for? Mementos? "You should throw those away," he said with a clipped voice. "They're morbid."

She glanced at him for a moment. "They're who we are. They're who he made us."

"No," he said through his teeth. He looked at her, his brow furrowed, anger leaking off his posture, and she responded to it by shifting away from him. He closed his eyes for a moment and relaxed himself. "They're who he _wants_ us to be." He crossed his arms. "There's no reason to hold on to that."

She shook her head slightly, then offered him the black queen. "This is you. You're free to do what you want with it."

Bob shook his head at her. It was hard not to yell, but he'd hold onto his temper for her sake. "I'm not a chess piece, and neither are you." Still, he took black queen and might have crushed it in his hand if he'd had the strength. He looked at it for a moment more before he stood up and threw it out as far as he could into the calm waters around the city. "There. It's gone. Your turn."

She opened her hand, staring at the little white chess piece with a frown, but made no move.

"You said it's who he made you... You can't hold onto it, Dot." He waited, but all she did was shrug. "You can't _want_ to hold onto it, can you?"

She looked at it seriously. "I merged with it in that dream. I don't think I can let it go."

Bob felt at a loss for words. What words could possibly encompass what Megabyte had done?What _Bob_ had done by allowing it all to happen... He sat back down beside her, glaring at the white queen as though it were the source of all the problems.

"Bob... What about us?" she asked, her voice barely louder than a breath of air. "Are you holding on to that, or is it another thing you want to toss out into the sea?"

He took a deep breath and turned his eyes back towards the city. "I don't know," he said, almost as quietly. "You deleted Matrix and Mouse." A sharp intake of breath beside him, but Bob didn't look at her. _Couldn't_ , really. "They're both okay," he repeated. "But you didn't know that. I just... I would never have thought you'd do that. It's made me wonder who you really are."

She let out a strangled sound, like something between a laugh and a sob. "Do you have any idea how many times I've played _chess_ with him? I saw the system destroyed so many times in different ways. I saw him rip people into pieces. People I loved, screaming... And then he'd bring them back and do it again, and I couldn't stop him. He was so powerful he could bring the _world_ back." She turned to look at him, and in the corner of his vision, he could see her eyes begging for a forgiveness that he didn't have to offer. "I couldn't watch it any more, Bob," she whispered. "I just couldn't. He was everything and everywhere, and the only way to stop him, even for a moment, was to play by his rules—"

He turned his head to look at her finally, but now it seemed that she was avoiding him. She stood up with a shake of her head. She leaned against a tree and crossed her arms defensively in front of herself, looking in his direction but avoiding his eyes. "I tried to throw it away. I thought I succeeded." She laughed bitterly and held up the queen. "But I didn't, did I? He came back, and I _had_ to play by his rules again. I'm sorry I didn't live up to your standards, but... I had to win or watch everyone die. I just couldn't do it again."

He frowned. "Was that really your choice, Dot? You could have..." She watched him for a moment, as if waiting to hear about what he'd have done differently. There had to be something. She hadn't had a chance while she was his captive during that siege but this time... she'd had _him_. Surely she could have fought harder. Asked for help. They could have defeated Megabyte together. "You could have trusted me to find a way out of it."

"Oh, Bob," she sighed softly, her arms dropping to her sides. "I asked you to do something, and you couldn't think of an answer." The queen spun around in her hand. "Everything he said was right. You've never managed to stop him before. How would you do it now?"

"We defeated him. We _always_ defeat him, Dot." He watched her with tired eyes as she shook her head. _Was_ Megabyte right? Had he failed her so completely that she couldn't even imagine his help? Maybe she didn't think he'd been defeated even now. She sure wasn't acting as if that virus was down for the count. Bob glanced at the queen in her hand again. "If I'm that useless, why didn't you let him delete me?"

"I don't know," she said quietly, and began to walk back and forth in front of him. He watched her with a curious gaze. Was there hope for her, or had Megabyte corrupted her completely? Could she have known, somewhere deep down, that Bob was real and the rest of them weren't? If that was why she was willing to destroy her friends and family, but not Bob himself, perhaps the corruption wasn't so deep that they couldn't remove it.

"He said you'd never forgive me," she said, continuing to pace while Bob watched her with judgement in his eyes. If she was fully corrupt, he'd never be able to let his guard down around her again. He could love her, but he'd never be able to trust her... could that even be love, if he didn't trust her? But if some part of her had known... Glitch had been working on that the whole time, after all...

It was a thread of hope, and he wanted to cling to it.

Eventually, Dot sat down again and put her hand on his. "I'm sorry, Bob. I tried to be her, but I'm not anymore."

"What— Her?"

"The Dot you left here. The sprite you loved. The one who would have found a way to let you help." Dot pursed her lips and shrugged sadly. "I think she got erased during that seige, and I've just been fooling both of us, thinking I was still her." She raised the queen between them. "Maybe this is who I am, now."

"You're still Dot," he said in an automatic way, but... he wasn't entirely sure. Megabyte had fractured her, and they both knew it. Would that woman have sent her brother into a game to defeat Daemon? Would she have made Bob into live bait? Bob wasn't so sure anymore. She wouldn't have taken destroying parts of the system as an acceptable loss. He wondered if that Dot might have been able to tell the difference between the trojan Megabob and the real thing.

He hated himself for the thought.

Glitch spun around in annoyance. The keytool seemed a lot more vocal than it used to be, Bob thought with a grimace, pulling himself away from Dot for a moment. "Yeah, I should have thought of that," he replied, then looked at the green sprite beside him. "That command is still in you. Glitch says it should be able to pull it out."

She nodded and looked at them both. "Thank you, Glitch," she said as the keytool rose and scanned her hand. He watched for a moment. The command that had caused her to lose sight of reality had done its work on both of them. Her eyes flickered between her hands and the Principle Office, and he could see a momentary hatred in them.

She was thinking of _him_. Well, why wouldn't she... "You still want Megabyte deleted?" he asked her while the keytool bathed her hand in golden light. She nodded. "Because he's a virus?"

"I don't know. Maybe?" She looked at him uncertainly. "Viruses hurt people. They damage, corrupt, destroy... logically, I should be destroyed, too."

"No," he said, anger leaking out again. He might be stubborn, he might be simple, he might even be _wrong_ , but he wasn't going to change that one syllable answer. Destroying Dot wouldn't fix what Megabyte had broken. It wouldn't change the fact that Bob had failed to defend what was most important, it wouldn't make what Dot had done all right, and it would _erase_ him to let it happen. No matter what she said, he'd fight her on that.

Dot stared at the white queen again. "What am I supposed to say, then? Am I supposed to be okay with this? With being like _him_?"

"You're not like him," argued Bob.

"I murdered my brother. And Mouse. I _infected_ a _binome_."

Bob shook his head. He couldn't leave her thinking that. "So what?" She looked at him with outrage, and he continued on quickly. "You didn't actually delete anyone, and _he_ had to infect that binome, and then scrub away his own infection. You can't do it on your own. The first two were under duress, and the second was... It's not the same thing."

She shook her head in disbelief. "Bob, don't you understand what I did?"

"I'm a _guardian_ ," he said in a low voice. "I probably understand better than you do."

She laughed. "Understand better than someone who did it? Maybe that's why I can't talk to you, Bob. You don't want to listen."

"You don't want to talk because you're afraid to talk," he said with another shake of his head. He felt frustrated, angry, though whether it was at her or at himself, he wasn't quite sure. "Look, I'm _listening,_ Dot, I— What is it I don't understand?"

She looked up, through the trees and into the sky. "It felt like _winning_ , Bob. It felt like everything was going to be all right. It felt like it made up for—" She sighed in frustration. "Deleting them hurt. I couldn't see another way to save you but to sacrifice them... but when I infected that binome, all that pain went away in an instant. I could have stayed in that moment forever." She shook her head angrily and brought the white queen up between them. "And maybe I can't do it again, but if I _could_ , I... I don't know that I _wouldn't_. Just to make it all go away." Her hand dropped, and she let out a breath. "Maybe a virus can't break you, Bob, but he _did_ break me..."

She squeezed her eyes shut and Bob put a hand on the one that held the chess piece. "You're not broken. And you're not like him," he said quietly.

She opened her eyes and they looked at each other in exhaustion for a moment more before Glitch beeped and clicked a message out, and Bob translated it automatically. "Glitch disintegrated the command. It's going to do another scan."

Dot sighed and shook her head. "It's all right. I've avoided it long enough. I should probably be at the Principle Office, letting _Phong_ scan me."

"No." Phong's scans would be in official records. The Collective could find out, and then who knew what might happen? "It's better this way."

"Right," said Dot with a bitter laugh. "If I were there, I might hurt someone. Or _infect_ someone. Or _murder_ —"

"Dot, stop," said Bob. "This is the same bash script you were selling me yesterday, and it's no more true now than it was then. You're not hurting people. Just because you've got some viral code doesn't mean you're a bad person. Just because you— because you were _manipulated_ into doing bad things— that doesn't mean you're a bad person. _Hex_ was a full blown virus. She did some great and terrible things, but she wasn't a bad person."

She rolled her eyes. "Hex was completely _random_."

"Hex was a hero," he countered.

"Well, I'm not Hex!"

Bob turned his head to look at Dot. "And I don't _want_ you to be," he said with frustration. Glitch stopped scanning suddenly and returned to Bob's wrist, displaying a few bits and bytes of data. Viral contamination, initial risk assessment, power levels... mostly normal for a sprite, but with some additional networking. A little closer to a class one virus than he'd have liked. A class zero virus, perhaps? Was that even a thing? Or was it just corruption of core files? What would other guardians see if they scanned her?

What did it matter if she saw herself as viral?

What did it matter if _he_ couldn't get past what he'd seen in Megabyte's torture chamber?

What did it matter if he didn't know how to fix her?

She was looking at the results over his shoulder, staring intently, and he regretted ever having taught her to read Glitch's output. Her expression was grim. "So what now?" she asked.

He looked at her. He couldn't seem to summon up one of his carefree smiles. "I don't know. Don't you have a plan for everything?"

"I should have had one for this..."

"You should have had a plan for becoming a virus?" he asked in disbelief.

"Well, I had one for a giant null monster," she said with a shrug. "And that was a lot more unexpected, don't you think?"

He couldn't help but laugh. "I always thought that was Phong's idea."

She smiled back at him sheepishly for a moment. "Phong's a great sysadmin, but he's more reactive. He barely ever _needs_ a plan, he already knows how to fix any problem." She paused for a moment. "Maybe he'd know how to fix me."

"You're not broken," Bob said, then sighed and shook his head. "You need to remember, Dot— _this is not the Supercomputer_."

She responded with a smirk, but it faded. "And would they be able to fix me in the Supercomputer?" she asked, her voice small.

"I don't know." He looked up at the Principle Office and thought for a moment before he shook his head. "Maybe they could undo the changes, but I don't think they'd even try. And I don't trust them enough to give them a chance. Not when they might..." He broke his gaze and looked down at the grass with a sigh.

He was glad he didn't have to spell it out to her. She'd always been so good at understanding what he didn't say. She just nodded and didn't ask him any more about what the guardians might do. "Could Glitch do it, maybe? I mean, it extracted your code from him. Maybe it could extract that viral code from me. Wouldn't that make me better?"

Bob raised and eyebrow and looked at his keytool. Glitch spun for a moment, then went silent. Bob shrugged. "Glitch was taking my code back. It's complicated... tied up in guardian protocols. If keytools could just extract viruses, we'd barely need a Guardian Collective in the first place."

"Okay." Dot paused for a moment, then looked at him with a bit of a smile. "What about what you were going to do with Megabyte?"

"What? No!" He looked at her with horror. How could she even ask him _that_? "First off, it's never been done! And... Dot, if I got it wrong on Megabyte, his alternative was deletion. I wanted to fix him, but if it didn't work, I could live with that. If I hurt _you_ , I'd never forgive myself."

She reached out and put her hand on his. "I can't imagine you would have been okay if he'd been hurt, Bob..."

He looked down for a moment, turning his palm up and letting their fingers interlace. "Dot, after everything he put you through, I..." He paused. His thoughts felt darker suddenly, and he realized he was disappointed with himself. "I never blamed you for that wedding. I blamed him. And I was angry even before all this. If I'd known everything he did to you... Maybe part of me _agreed_ that it was worse than deletion. Maybe part of me wanted the same kind of revenge he did." He frowned and caught her eyes. "But all I want now is for you to be okay."

She pulled her hand away, put both hands around her queen as she contemplated it. "How can _anything_ be okay? You watched me delete my brother..."

"He was just a sim," he said firmly, but sighed at Dot's glare. He had to give her something else to hold on to. "You refused to delete me," he said after a moment. "We can build on that."

She seemed to accept that, nodding in reply before she stood up. She moved almost aimlessly for a nano, contemplating the Principle Office. "What if I said I couldn't build on anything while trying to be Command.Com? What if I said I'm still resigning?"

He stood up and walked over to her. "I'd say... we're both overdue for some downtime." He reached for her hand.

"And what if I said I can't be here, where everything's going to remind me of him?"

He frowned. Not be here in Mainframe? He had trouble imagining her anywhere else. Still, it wasn't as though he didn't know systems that would be safe for them. He spoke slowly and carefully. "I'd say I came from the Net. Maybe I can show you around some of those other people and systems I've told you about." He paused for a nano and smiled, pushing back against his nerves. "I'd also say you would miss Mainframe and all your business plans really quickly." He pulled her closer, interlinking thier fingers again. "It's going to be okay, Dot."

She pursed her lips and looked at him as they stood shoulder to shoulder. "Bob? I don't want to misread... I mean, it's just that I'd understand if— was he right? Are we still... are we still..." He tilted his head.

Dot took a deep breath, as if making a decision, and her game face came down over her features. "Bob, before that... game of chess, you said we'd figure it out. That we'd be... together. But that game changed things for both of us, and I need to know: how do you feel about me? Is there still an us? Or is this just what you'd do for any sprite?"

He raised his eyebrows. "You think I'd offer to take just any sprite on a tour of the net?"

"I don't know," she scoffed. "You're— you're _you_. You're the kind of man who'd do what it took to fix things, and you'd do that for anyone. It's as pathological as my planning. So am I _anyone_ to you, or am I Dot Matrix, the woman you love?"

"You're definitely Dot Matrix," he hedged. He looked at her as her face changed to show frustration. How _did_ he feel?

Could he get past her being willing to delete sprites? He was pretty sure he could. After all, if she _was_ a virus now, it wasn't her fault. And maybe, even though she denied it, maybe some part of her had known that _Bob_ was real and everything else wasn't. Glitch had been trying to get through to both of them, hadn't it?

Of course... he'd wronged her— once she really thought about it again, she was sure to be upset about him going through what were essentially diary entries, so maybe it was actually _her_ that was going to end up breaking this whole thing apart. Maybe it would be better for him to end things now, before she had a chance to do it. It would definitely hurt less if he broke if off now.

And for her to heal from what Megabyte had done... it was all tangled up in their love, the virus had made sure of that on multiple levels. If they did what they needed to fix her as just friends, wouldn't that be better for her?

He didn't want to go back to just friends, but what if that was the best thing for her? He was the guardian, he was uncompromised. He wondered if she could even make a competent decision to be with him right now.

Her face was falling. He needed to say something, but _what_?

"I, uh... don't know— ow! Glitch!" The keytool beeped and chittered, and Bob stared at it, taken aback as he dropped Dot's hand again. Dot looked at Bob with a question in her eyes, her brow creasing with confusion. "Glitch is calling me names," Bob explained.

"Why?"

He looked at Glitch for a moment on his bracer, hesitating. "A guardian shouldn't be indecisive," he said after a moment.

Dot shook her head and looked at the chess piece again. "You're not indecisive, Bob. You just don't know how to say it, so I'll say it for you." She closed her eyes, and he watched her with worry. "It's too much. He said it would be, and he was right. He may be terrible and sadistic and sick, but he analyzed us both, and he got it right."

"Hang on, will you?" Bob shook his head, his expression darkening. "Can't you give me a nano? Why do you want to give up? We've gotten through— well, maybe not worse, but we've made it through other situations. We made it through the Fun House, and that's just about unbeatable." She mumbled something. "What?"

"I said, _I_ made it through the Fun House."

Bob shook his head and hit the nearest tree trunk. Leaves fell down around them and he turned to look at her. "You're _unbelievable_ , you know that?"

Dot smiled grimly. "You think so? _I_ made it through the Fun House. When you let Enzo play with Glitch, _I_ got my own slow food from Al's. _I_ led this city through a seige and a war. I don't need your pity, Bob. And I don't need _you_. I'll figure it out myself—"

" _Pity_? That party of yours is pretty full with just you in it— but you know, I think your pants are on fire. I think you need me as much as I need _you_ , Dot."

She shook her head. "You don't need a virus on your side."

"A virus?" He shook his head dismissively. "Since when do I care about that?" She stared at him, speechless. He wasn't sure where he was going, but his mouth was moving, and he hoped some part of him knew what he was doing. "Look: you're scared of what he's done. _I get it_. I'm scared too. But you're still you, Dot. You'll always be you, no matter what changes." He reached out to her purposefully, but she pulled away. Bob almost swore in frustration, but he needed to convince her. "There _is_ one thing I think he was right about: I can't change who someone else is. If someone's going to change, they're changing themselves. Dot—" He took her hands in his own, and his anger burned at the despair. "You don't want him to win? Then stop letting him walk all over us! Stop using _his_ reasoning to block every opening I give you."

She blinked at him for a while. She took a breath as if to speak, then stopped, then did it again. "Is that what I'm doing?"

Bob nodded seriously. "On his terms, we both lose, Dot." His hand closed around the white queen, blocking it from her view. " _His terms_ are what led you to break the system. _His terms_ make us both his puppets. _His terms_ tell me I don't know who either of us are anymore— but I'm not willing to live by them. User delete it all, _his terms_ make you willing to—" Bob stopped suddenly.

"To destroy, and infect, and corrupt."

"Yeah," he said, the word slipping unwilling from between his lips. "Is that how you want to live, Dot? Under his rule?"

She shook her head and took a deep breath. "Let's say I throw his terms away. What then? What are... what are _your_ terms?"

Bob frowned. " _Our_ terms, Dot. They've got to be ours. We've got to do this together." He sat down on the bench beside her again. "I want you safe. I want Mainframe safe. I want..." He sighed, and decided to be brave. "Dot, I love you. Maybe everything would be easier if I didn't, but he can't change you, he can't change me, and I _do_ still love you. I didn't spend a day fighting to get back from the Web just to abandon you because he showed up. I'll fight for us if you can't right now." He looked at her, watching as her gaze turned back to the queen. DRM it all, he needed her! "Tell me what you want."

"I want Mainframe safe." She shook her head. "I want to turn back time. I want to have never lost you in the first place..."

Bob took her hand. "We can't go back, Dot. We have to go forward."

"You asked what I _want_. I want to be who I was before." She looked away. "I want to trust you like I did then. I want to feel like we could do anything..."

"Then let's make that happen." He tried an encouraging smile. "Do you love me, Dot?"

She looked over at him briefly and nodded. "Yes," she said in a whisper. "I just don't see how that helps."

He shrugged. "Maybe it just means we don't have to be alone," said Bob, leaning around to catch her gaze. "If you can just trust me, I promise, we _can_ do anything." She turned slightly and looked up at him through her lashes. "Just _try_ ," he asked. _Begged_. One thought bounced around his mind as if it were the only one that mattered.

She leaned over and her forehead rested on his shoulder. "I can try," she replied.

Glitch beeped, and Bob looked down to see his keytool had made another daisy for her. He smiled slightly. She breathed the scent in deeply, and the tension that hadn't left her eased, ever so slightly. "Thank you, Glitch," she said.

"Now will you throw the trash he gave you away?"

She looked between him and the small white piece for a moment, then nodded. Bob walked beside her to the water's edge and watched as she extended her arm out and dropped the piece. It landed in the water with a soft _plop_ and they watched for a while as it sank deeper and deeper, until they couldn't see it through the refraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you liked the ending!
> 
> I am looking at how to make a sequel right now, but it will probably be at least a month before I post anything for it, more likely a few months because woooooork. 
> 
> Comments and criticisms are both very welcome, and will be even if you're reading this five years from now.


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